Sixteen, in French Class

Salman Rushdie met Voltaire's Candide at sixteen, as a set book in French class, and it wired him for the rest of his life. In this opening episode he tells that story himself, then starts making the case that carries this whole series: Candide is built from war, plague, and cruelty, all of it real, and every page plays for laughs. Rushdie thinks the laughter is the most honest thing in the book. He ends with a question about our own world that I have not been able to shake since. Come meet the book, and the boy who never got over it.