Based on the 1758 edition, George R Healy's accurate and lively translation of Montesquieu's provocative fiction retains Montesquieu's paragraphing and is accompanied by a unique and handy analytical table of contents. In his perceptive Introduction, Healy presents The Persian Letters as a kind of overture to the Enlightenment, a work designed more to explore than to resolve two problems of great urgency for eighteenth century thought: that of discovering universals, or at least constants, amid the diversity of human culture and society, and of confronting the proposition that there are now values in human relationships except those imposed by force or agreed upon in self-interested conventions.
