A young man raised to believe this is the best of all possible worlds is thrown out of the castle and spends the book being flogged, shipwrecked, robbed and hanged across three continents to test the theory. Voltaire wrote it in three days, published it under a false name in five cities at once, and denied authorship for the rest of his life. It was banned almost everywhere and never out of print. Zadig, the earlier tale of a Babylonian sage whose good sense brings him nothing but trouble, keeps it company.