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Salman Rushdie on Voltaire's Candide

Episode 14

The Blot on the Book

Featuring Salman Rushdie

Audio episode · 13 min

Salman Rushdie on Candide

Salman Rushdie loves this book. That is what makes this episode hard, and what makes it honest. Voltaire, the Enlightenment's loudest voice for tolerance, laced Candide with bigotries he never bothered to hide: a Morocco painted as savage while Europe burns behind it, jokes that turn a whole army into a slur, and a contempt for Jews he set down in his own Philosophical Dictionary. Rushdie quotes it all straight, nothing smoothed over, and then asks the question every honest reader eventually faces: what do you do with a book you love when its author says things you cannot forgive? His answer is worth the wait.

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