"Tout me persecute dans ce monde, jusqu'aux êtres qui n'existent pas." Hardly ever successful against the rest of the world, he complains: He is up against greed, envy, corruption, lust and hypocrisy, always trying his best to support human rights and general justice himself. Zadig is born to suffer, being cursed with a "beau naturel fortifié par l'éduaction", thus an odd man out in a society where the majority of people are both mean-spirited and stupid. In fact, Zadig is a thinly disguised philosophical satire on Voltaire's own environment, addressing all the issues he cared and raged about: nepotism, power balance, sexual exploitation, abuse, medical charlatanism, bizarre traditions, superstition, evidence-based science versus blind faith. Just like contemporary science fiction authors often choose a futuristic, technologically advanced and remote society to describe questions they consider relevant for our own time and place, Voltaire moves his setting to a foreign and ancient culture, but indicates that the adventure story is more than just an action-filled tale of fortune for those who can read between the lines.
#Zadig et voltaire france plus
In fact, Zadig is a th Zadig, according to Voltaire in his preface, is "un ouvrage qui dit plus qu'il ne semble dire". Zadig, according to Voltaire in his preface, is "un ouvrage qui dit plus qu'il ne semble dire".