Candide

Young Candide is taught by his tutor Pangloss that this is the best of all possible worlds. Then he is kicked out of the castle for kissing the baron's daughter and sets off on a journey through war, shipwreck, the Lisbon earthquake, the Inquisition, slavery and the golden land of El Dorado, while Pangloss keeps insisting that everything is for the best.

Published anonymously in 1759 and banned almost at once, Candide is Voltaire's furious and very funny attack on philosophical optimism. Its final advice, that we must cultivate our garden, is still quoted. It is short, fast and the perfect introduction to the Enlightenment; continue with Zadig.

François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who called himself Voltaire, was imprisoned twice in the Bastille as a young man for his satirical verses. Exiled to England, he returned full of admiration for its freedoms and wrote the Letters on England, which were burned in Paris.

He lived for years with the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, spent a stormy period at the court of Frederick the Great and finally settled at Ferney, near the Swiss border, from where he campaigned against religious intolerance and miscarriages of justice. He wrote plays, history and poetry, but his tales, Candide and Zadig, are what most readers love today.