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Salman Rushdie on Voltaire's Candide

Episode 11

Power Disappoints

Featuring Salman Rushdie

Audio episode · 15 min

Salman Rushdie on Candide

A man kneels blindfolded on the deck of a warship at Portsmouth, four soldiers take aim, and the crowd goes home satisfied. Salman Rushdie knows exactly who that man was, and why Voltaire could not forgive what happened to him. Then Venice: a senator who owns everything a person can own and takes pleasure in none of it, and a carnival supper where six strangers all turn out to be kings without thrones, every one of them real; Rushdie went and checked. Voltaire's argument here is one of the coldest in the book, and it is not that power corrupts.

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