This is the translation and adaptation of "Escanyapobres", by Narcís Oller.

In the Catalan town of Pratbell, everyone knows Oleguer by the name they gave him: the Poor-squeezer

A fortune that is never spent stops being a fortune. It becomes an appetite.

First published in 1884, L'escanya-pobres is the shortest and most controlled of Narcís Oller's novels, and many critics count it his finest. Oller was the writer who brought the modern novel into Catalan. Émile Zola, who wrote the preface to his French edition, called him "a narrator who is moved by his narration."

This new translation renders Oller's dense nineteenth-century prose in plain modern English, with a translator's note on the choices behind it.