Following his traumatic departure from the court of Frederick the Great, Voltaire wrote "L'Orphelin de la Chine", a play later identified as a turning point in French theatre from the point of view of costume and set design. As he settled in Switzerland, he composed the "Epitre de l'auteur, en arrivant dans sa terre pres du lac de Geneve". Yet he remained alert to goings-on in the outside world: in Italy, with the "Examen du Testament politique du cardinal Alberoni", in Portugal, with the "Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne", which grapples with the problem of human suffering and foreshadows "Candide", and in Austria and Hungary, with some shorter poems.

Written substantially in the late 1740s and published between 1747 and 1749, the three contes which are collected in this volume are among the best known of Voltaire's works. They were composed at a time when Voltaire had abandoned the tranquillity of Cirey for the tumult of Paris and Versailles, and was enjoying new recognition from members of the court and the learned societies. The three contes in the present volume, "Zadig", "Memnon" and "Le Monde comme il va", mark a new departure for Voltaire. They are the first of his fictional writings to be composed especially for the general reading public. Secure in his official prestige by the late 1740s, Voltaire felt free to publish these fictional experiments which adapt the popular mode of oriental fiction, parodying and pastiching the works of other writers - while at the same time offering serious criticisms of French society and his reflections on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil.