PARIS — A 250-year-old book by the Enlightenment anti-establishment writer Voltaire is climbing best-seller lists in France weeks after attacks by French-born Islamic extremists that left 20 people dead, including the gunmen.
The Treatise on Tolerance is a cry against religious fanaticism and stemmed from Voltaire’s conviction that religious differences were at the heart of world strife. He wrote at a time of bloody tension between French Protestants and Catholics.
The Jan. 7-9 attacks started when two gunmen stormed Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine whose staff had received death threats for caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Also attacked was a kosher supermarket, where the assailant killed four people.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo was widely seen in France as an attack on freedom of expression and the secular state, and in the days after, Voltaire’s writings were frequently invoked.
Voltaire’s book came out in 1763 and now has a place among the best-sellers for Amazon, French retail chain FNAC and French bookseller Gibert Joseph.