When his love for the Baron's daughter is discovered Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his companions begin a breathless tour of Europe South America and Asia as an outrageous series of disasters befall them earthquakes syphilis a brush with the Inquisition and murder testing the young hero's optimism.|'The prince of philosophical novels' John UpdikeIn Candide Voltaire threw down an audacious challenge to the philosophical views of the Enlightenment to create on