Zadig

This modern Critical Reader’s Edition includes an illuminating afterword tracing Voltaire’s intellectual relationships with Enlightenment thinkers and philosophers (including Locke, Diderot, Rousseau and Newton), containing unique research into his influences and economic attachments, a comprehensive timeline of his life and works, a glossary of Enlightenment terminology, and a detailed index of all of Voltaire’s writings. This unique professional translation renders Voltaire’s sharp, satirical prose into modern language to preserve the original clarity and movement of the text. Combined with the scholarly amplifying material, this edition is a groundbreaking exploration of Voltaire’s classic works and his enduring artistic and philosophical influence, and influence on modern Protestant-Atheistic Theology.

First published anonymously in 1747, though likely written several years earlier and completed around 1741, Zadig was issued in Geneva and later republished in Paris. It appeared in the wake of Voltaire’s theatrical successes and just before his deeper immersion into historical and scientific writing. The novella’s exotic setting allowed Voltaire to explore controversial themes under the protective veil of orientalism. Babylonian kings and Zoroastrian priests are proxies for the monarchs and clerics of Voltaire’s France, and their whims appear all the more ridiculous for being presented in distant garb. This distance gave Voltaire the freedom to criticize without immediate reprisal, though the work was well understood by contemporaries as an attack on social injustice, judicial cruelty, and theological despotism. The tale’s combination of clarity, brevity, and ironic detachment made it widely read, and it became one of the most translated of Voltaire’s shorter works during his lifetime.