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Salman Rushdie on Voltaire's Candide

Episode 6

The New World Is the Old World

Featuring Salman Rushdie

Audio episode · 15 min

Salman Rushdie on Candide

A ship from Lisbon puts in at Buenos Aires, and the Old World is there on the dock to meet it. Salman Rushdie reads chapters thirteen through sixteen of Voltaire's Candide: a governor with too many names, a lovers' ruse borrowed from the Book of Genesis, and a getaway with a myth folded inside it. In Paraguay a dead man sits up, delighted to see Candide, until one sentence ends the friendship. Rushdie watches the sweet hero's body count climb, plays the strangest scene in the book straight, and explains why the best education in it comes from the hired help. Who survives a world that will not hold still?

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