Micromegas: Newly Translated and Annotated

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Micromegas 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 Platos Dream and Memnon all in a new translation by acclaimed French specialist Douglas Parme.

Reviews

Voltaire 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 Parme on top form. * TLS *

Author Bio

Voltaire (16941778) was a French man of letters and a leading figure of the Enlightenment, known for his outspokenness and polemical writings. The philosophical novellas Candide and Zadig are among his most celebrated works.