The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat

A whirlwind tour through the utopias of modernity

The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a brilliant fictional excursion through Western political philosophy from one of our most original thinkers. Professor Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively from his native land to the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria, and Libertaria on a quest to find the best of all possible worlds. Freed from the confines of his ivory tower, this wandering intellectual is made to confront the perplexed state of modern thinking in a dazzling comedy of ideas.“Knock-out satirical humour.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“Written in a beautifully clear style, full of a keen, serious wit … Lukes achieves both lightness and weight in a way many novelists might envy.”
—Independent

“This book is a box of delights, often wonderfully funny and always deliciously clever, a contemporary political satire to set among the best.”
—New Statesman

“Steven Lukes’s moral fable is in the tradition of tall travellers’ tales from Swift and Voltaire to Lewis Carroll and Samuel Butler.”
—London Review of Books

“Lukes manages to equal the pace and flair of Candide.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Utterly magnetic.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A delightfully edifying comedy.”
—Guardian

“A counterpart to Jonstein Gaarder’s bestseller, Sophie’s World, for those who might be seeking an introduction to political theory.”
—Prospect

“Charming and refreshing.”
—Radical Philosophy

Steven Lukes is the author of numerous books and an academic with a distinguished career. He is currently Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is on the editorial board of the European Journal of Sociology and a Fellow of the British Academy.