Eugenie Grandet

CHOSEN BY ROSE TREMAIN AS HER ORANGE INHERITANCE - Vintage Classics has partnered with The Orange Prize for Fiction to ask six recipients of the Prize which book they would pass onto the next generation.

'This brilliant but devastatingly sad novel moved me so much, I began it again the moment I got to the end' Rose Tremain

Monsieur Grandet is a very rich man whose chief care is his gold. He runs his household with exacting miserly attention and his wife and daughter suffer a Spartan existence. On the evening of his daughter Eugenie's twenty third birthday his foppish nephew Charles suddenly arrives from Paris.

Eugenie has never known passion. Now, in an instant, she falls in love and her life is changed forever. Monsieur Grandet will not countenance his daughter's marriage to her penniless cousin and Eugenie's determination to follow her heart leads her into direct conflict with her father.