Candide

A short satirical novel, published anonymously in 1759, that tests the philosophy of optimism against the world. Candide is raised in a Westphalian castle by the tutor Pangloss, who teaches that this is the best of all possible worlds and that everything happens for the best, a parody of Leibniz and his popularisers. Expelled for kissing the baron's daughter Cunégonde, Candide is swept through war, shipwreck, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, an auto-da-fé of the Inquisition, slavery and robbery, across Europe and South America. He visits the utopian kingdom of Eldorado and travels with the pessimist Martin, who thinks the world is ruled by malice. Pangloss keeps explaining every disaster as necessary. The book mocks war, religious fanaticism, colonial cruelty and philosophical system-building, and asks how anyone can justify a world with so much suffering. Its famous closing advice, that we must cultivate our garden, offers work in place of theory.

It is the funniest book on the problem of evil, short enough for an afternoon, and it still punctures any argument that explains away real suffering.