Persian Letters is a satirical story of two Persian brothers travelling through France by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu.

Published in Amsterdam in 1721, it pointed out the "barbaric" absurdities of contemporary French life from an outsider's perspective, and was a symptom of a widening movement towards Enlightenment thought, where questioning the authority of the church and the state was blossoming.

The same technique -- that of an outsider commenting on accepted peculiarities of daily life -- was used extensively by Voltaire in his short stories and satirical works.