Eugenie Grandet

'Eugenie Grandet' is one of the earliest and most famous novels in Balzac's 'The Human Comedy' cycle. The dreary Grandet household, inundated by the overwhelming greed and miserliness of Grandet himself, is rudely awakened from its suffocating bleakness by the arrival of young Eugenie's elegant and coiffed Parisian cousin Charles. Newly orphaned and without a cent to his name. Eugenie Charles' arrival is a light at the end of the tunnel and the start of an amorous blossoming. For the provincial Midas Grandet, it's the perfect opportunity to test the limits of his callousness. Little does Eugenie suspect, Grandet will not be the last unscrupulous individual close to her that she will have to grapple with.

An extraordinarily incisive, moral yet entertaining story struck by tragedy, Balzac's 'Eugenie Grandet' presents a scathing social critique of provincial attitudes and greed in the aftermath of the French Revolution that still remains relevant today. It summons to mind the Charles Dickens classic 'Oliver Twist', but infused far more strongly with Balzac's trademark scathing sardonic wit.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for his collection of novels and plays 'The Human Comedy'. His detailed observation of humanity and realistic depiction of society makes him one of the earliest representatives of realism in Europe. He was a master-creator of complex characters that often found themselves in ambiguous moral dilemmas.