Zadig is the Candide that could have been, a more traditionally novelistic novel with better plotting, richer characters, and a message that affirms Optimism instead of lambasting it.

It is also a lesser work. For while Candide is a wildly uneven book that may not even qualify as a novel at all, its controversial and furious stances against church, state, and colonialism give it a vitality that Zadig sorely lacks, despite its more fantastical premise. Compared to Candide, Zadig is timid, conventional, and cliché—though it still has charm as a well-written adventure story of its era.

Zadig takes place not in the Middle East of real history, but rather in the Middle East of European imagination, a land of sensual women, swindling merchants, and a careless juxtaposition of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Babylon, and Ancient Persia. Yet Voltaire borrows not only the settings of the Arabian Nights, but also the genres that it prefigured, from swashbuckling romance to crime and detective fiction. Because of this, the novel is somewhat episodic, and several chapters elapse before Voltaire establishes its focus as a story of exile.

Throughout the whole book, there are themes of religious tolerance, rationalism, and anti-clericalism, whose advocates and antagonists find surrogates in Orientalist tropes. However, they are there as undercurrents, not exhortations, and one gets the sense that Voltaire is pulling his punches; in fact, many of these incidents can be read not as enlightened critiques of Christianity but as narrow-minded bashings of Islam.

Zadig may be the answer to those who find Candide too erratic and delirious, and an example of an unfairly overshadowed work. For myself, it is merely a footnote and a stepping stone.