This handsome binding originally housed the legendary writer Voltaire's Zadig, or The Book of Fate,first published in 1747. The Book of Fatetells the story of Zadig, an ancient Babylonian philosopher. It is a philosophical treatise that makes startlingly effective use of contradiction and juxtaposition. In it one finds the seeds of the modern detective story, including a likely source of inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's master of "ratiocination," C. Auguste Dupin.