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Salman Rushdie on Voltaire's Candide

Episode 7

Why Would You Ever Leave?

Featuring Salman Rushdie

Audio episode · 11 min

Salman Rushdie on Candide

A river runs under a mountain and comes out in a country where the streets are paved with jewels and nobody stoops to pick them up. Salman Rushdie reads the El Dorado chapters of Voltaire's Candide and asks the question the book plants there: if you found the one happy place on earth, why would you ever leave? His answer runs through Thomas More, Wakanda, and Toni Morrison, then turns personal: Bombay, London, New York, and what home means to a man who has had three of them. Keep an ear out for the hummingbirds. And for the King's parting advice, which Rushdie has spent a lifetime not taking.

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