This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment. The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. The protagonist, Julian Chestny, is hypocritically disdainful of his mother's...

In the days following the Six-Day War, a survivor of the Holocaust visits the reunited city of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall in the Old City, he encounters the beggars and madmen that congregate there every evening, who force him to confront the ghosts of his past and his ties to the present. Weaving together myth and mystery, parable and paradox, Wiesel beckons the reader on a spiritual journey back and forth in time, always returning to Jerusalem....

The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds". Candide is characterised by its...