Description
Book SynopsisMicromegas is a six-hundred-and-fifty-year-old, thirty-nine-kilometre-high giant from the planet Sirius who can speak a thousand languages and has been expelled from his homeland for writing a heretical tract. On Saturn he befriends the local secretary of the Academy of Sciences – a comparative dwarf, being only two kilometres high – and the two decide to travel to earth together, where they will make startling discoveries about human nature. At once a story-length Bildungsroman and a philosophical tale, ‘Micromegas’ is a classic Enlightenment text, and is accompanied in this volume by thirteen other pieces – including ‘Plato’s Dream’ and ‘Memnon’ – all in a new translation by acclaimed French specialist Douglas Parmée.
Trade ReviewVoltaire will always be regarded as the biggest name of recent literature, and perhaps throughout all the centuries. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This welcome selection of fourteen of the lesser-known fables and parables comes in a wonderfully loose-limbed and unstuffy translation which shows both Voltaire – and the late Douglas Parmée – on top form. * TLS *
