Title: An Officer and a Spy
Author: Harris, Robert
Published by: Arrow Books
Year: 2014
First published: Hutchinson, 2013
Date reviewed: 08.15
ISBN: 9780099580881

Another excellent work by Robert Harris. He has written a fully-researched but fictionalised account of the “Dreyfus affair” which split French society around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In his introduction Harris writes: “None of the characters in the pages that follow, not even the most minor, is wholly fictional, and almost all of what occurs, at least in some form, actually happened in real life.”

In the paranoia in France that followed that country’s defeat by Germany in 1870 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice saw Captain Alfred Dreyfus courtmarshalled for espionage and sentenced to exile on Devil’s Island, where he suffered for years in solitary captivity, shackled and denied any contact with the outside world — or even his gaolers.

The story is told in the first person by Major Georges Picquart. Picquart was involved on the fringes of the original investigation and courtmarshal, and was then appointed Head of the army’s counter-espionage section. Here he came to realise that Dreyfus was innocent and the real traitor was still free. His efforts to re-open the case were blocked at every turn, and he found that the French establishment would rather mount a huge conspiracy of lies and deceit than admit their mistake, free Dreyfus and convict the guilty man. The conspiracy involved the very highest people in the military and government. The thread of anti-Semitism (Dreyfus was Jewish) runs through the story and colours the attitudes of the key players and the public.

In case you don’t know the story well enough to recall how l’affaire Dreyfus ended I won’t spoil it, but I’m sure you’ll be keen to follow it to its conclusion.