An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

(Book Review)

Background Information/ Why I Read This Book

          This is a historical novel based on the infamous Dreyfus Affair.

            The Dreyfus Affair (W) was something I first learned about back in my college days from a history lecture in a course on Modern Europe.  My professor at the time spent a full 50 minutes talking about all the various ramifications of the Dreyfus Affair, but to sum the whole thing up to its simplest points:

            (1). In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army was convicted of treason for passing military secrets to the Germans.

            (2). It turned out that Dreyfus might have been innocent, and a victim of anti-Semitism in the French army.

            (3). French society divided into two camps.  The army and the Catholics were against Dreyfus, the republicans and the anti-clericals believed Dreyfus was innocent,

            (4—and this is where things get interesting) Everyone in France collectively lost their minds over this for the next 10 years.  It paralyzed French politics, it caused riots in the streets, it was the source of trial after trial in the French courts, and Emile Zola, the leading French literary figure at the time, plunged himself right into the middle of it, by publically accusing the leaders of the military of corruption in his infamous J’accuse (W). 

            (Zola was accused of libel, tried in a huge sensational court trial, convicted, sentenced to jail, and then fled to England.)

            At a certain point, my history professor told us, the French stopped referring to the case as “The Dreyfus Affair” and instead just started saying, “The Affair”—so infamous had the whole thing become that it needed no specification.

            I thought the whole thing sounded fascinating for several reasons.  For one thing, the intense passion surrounding the whole affair, and how completely out of hand everything got, seems to be very stereotypically French.  (As Americans, I think we enjoy mocking the French for their excitability, but also secretly admire, and maybe even envy, their intense passion about political issues.)  Also, for us political junkies, as this took place in what can generally be called the modern era, the secular Left versus religious Right political divisions caused by this affair look very similar to the political divisions we still see today.  Finally, this affair revealed the deep anti-Semitism in some parts of French society, and so it perhaps serves as a bit of an unsettling prelude to Vichy France.

            And so after the history lecture I mentally marked The Dreyfus Affair down on my long list of: “Things to read more about someday.” 

           

            …and then, as with most of the things on that long list, I never got around to it.

            The Dreyfus Affair, however, has been touched on in a lot of the books I’ve read.  It was mentioned in the short biography I read of Georges Clemenceau.  (Clemenceau was one of the leading supporters of Dreyfus—or Dreyfusards, as they were known.)  The Dreyfus Affair, and how it split the French anarchist community in the 1890s, is mentioned in the biography I read of Louis Michel.  The Dreyfus Affair is also featured in The World That Never Was.  (Victor-Henri de Rochefort (W), one of the figures whose careers is followed in that book, made an interesting political shift from one of the leading radical leftists in the 1870s to an anti-Semite and one of the leading Anti-Dreyfusards in the 1890s.)  And the Dreyfus Affair is mentioned in the background as something affecting the morale of the French troops in Africa in Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa.

            And if we include movies in this list, The Life of Emile Zola, which I reviewed on this blog 8 years ago, also dealt with the Dreyfus Affair.

            But up until now, I had read no full length books specifically devoted to the subject.

            Then, shortly after reading and reviewing Conspirita by Robert Harris, I discovered that there was a new Robert Harris historical fiction book about the Dreyfus Affair.  “Well,” I thought, “this is definitely right up my alley.  I’m interested in the Dreyfus Affair.  I like historical fiction.  And I’ve enjoyed Robert Harris’s other books.”  (Okay, to be perfectly honest, I did give Imperium by Robert Harris a bit of a harsh review.  But I enjoyed Conspirita at least, and didn’t completely hate Imperium.)

            So, naturally, it was a foregone conclusion that I would have to buy and read this book.

The Review

          An excellent book!  I fully recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in the subject material.

            I’ve been a bit harsh on Robert Harris in the past, but if you accept that sometimes the quality of an author can vary from book to book, than it’s possible for me to be harsh on Imperium and still praise this book.  And this book is about as perfect a work of historical fiction as you could ask for!

            Historical fiction is a broad genre but this is one of those historical fiction books that sticks very closely to the historical record.  Just about every event in the book really happened, although it has been re-imagined and dramatized for the purposes of the novel.  And every single name that appears in the book was a real historical person. 

            (Of course, since the demands of the novel are slightly different from the demands of a pure history, the author admits to having “been obliged to simplify, to cut out some figures entirely, to dramatise and to invent many personal details” (Author’s Note).  But I’m fairly sure these are all small details.  At the very least, everything in the book checks out with all the information available on Wikipedia.)

************************SPOILERS???*******************************

[Sidenote: Whenever I read historical fiction, I always debate with myself whether or not reading the real history on Wikipedia constitutes “spoiling” the story.  Generally, I tell myself it doesn’t, because the real history is public knowledge, and it’s stuff I should have known anyways if I were a better, more educated person.  Besides, in many historical novels, you already know the basics of the history anyway, and the fun is just in seeing the author dramatizing it. 

            In this particular case, however, there are numerous surprising twists along the way—all of them historically accurate.  (The Dreyfus Affair is one of those cases where the truth really is much stranger than fiction.)  And I did ruin much of this book for myself by reading the character biographies on Wikipeda in advance.  So be forewarned.  Also, possibly if you really want to approach this book fresh, it might be best to stop reading this review here.]

            The book is a first person narrative told from the perspective of Georges Picquart (W), who was the head of the statistical section—the equivalent of France’s intelligence service at the time.  The book follows his amazing, but true, story of how Picquart started out as a firm believer in Dreyfus’s guilt, but gradually started to uncover evidence that proved Dreyfus was innocent.  And then once Picquart did uncover the evidence that Dreyfus was innocent, he faced a huge struggle to get anyone in the army to care that they had sentenced the wrong man to life imprisonment.

            What’s particularly good about this book is that Robert Harris completely recreates Picquart’s whole investigation.  The reader goes on the journey of discovery with Picquart, seeing how initially small pieces of information lead to bigger and bigger revelations as Picquart keeps doggedly following the trail. 

            As Picquart encounters layers upon layers of deception around him, his perception about the people around him (both in the army, and his fellow officers in the Statistical Section) also begins to change.  And the reader gets to experience this change of perception with Picquart, as characters we once thought were trustworthy are revealed to be thoroughly corrupt.

            The bulk of this book is on the intelligence detective work aspect of the story.  The huge political incident that the Dreyfus Affair evolved into is focused on less—it’s not completely absent, but it only occurs in the second part of the book. 

            The book is divided into two parts—the first part is Georges Picquart’s investigation, the second part is the legal struggle of Picquart and the other Dreyfusards to get the French government to acknowledge it made a mistake. 

            The first part of the book moves with excellent pacing—slow deliberate suspenseful build-ups to a truth that is only gradually revealed.

            The second part of the book feels a bit rushed.  This is probably inevitable.  At 608 pages, I suspect Robert Harris had reached the page limit his publishers would allow for a mass-market paperback like this.  To encompass all the details of the many Dreyfus courtroom trails would have been just too much for one book.

Connections with Other Books I’ve Read

          I’ve already listed several books in my introduction, and won’t repeat them here.  But there are a few other books on my reading list that are related to this one.

* Alexander Dumas and The Man in the Iron Mask  is mentioned a couple times in this book by the characters as a reference to the fate of Dreyfus (who was, like the man in the iron mask, locked away in a living tomb.)

* Emile Zola’s The Debacle is mentioned briefly in this book and Emile Zola himself is of course a major player in the Dreyfus Affair.

* Besides Zola, another one of France’s literary giants of the period Anatole France is also mentioned (in passing) as a Dreyfusard.

* To explain the mind-set of the French army in the 1890s, several references throughout this book are made to the massive defeat the French suffered against the Germans in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and which the French Army was still traumatized by in 1890.  For an excellent history of that conflict, see The Fall of Paris by Alistair Horne.

* Stefan Blowitz, one of the most famous journalists of the 1890s, who was a character in Flashman and the Tiger, pops up briefly as well.

* Lastly, and somewhat more tangentially, in my review of Cambodia’s Curse, I asked the question of to what degree corruption is a uniquely Cambodian issue, and to what degree is it something that permeates all governments?

            The Dreyfus Affair, as portrayed in this book, shows that the leaders of the French Army in the 1890s were all thoroughly corrupt.  I’m sure this doesn’t reflect current French society, but it does seem to suggest that many (all?) countries have some history of corruption in their past.

Other Notes:

* According to Wikipedia (W), Roman Polanski is currently directing a movie based off of this book.

            I’ll be curious to see the movie when it comes out, although I’m a bit skeptical that this story will fit neatly into a 2-hour film.  But I’ll be happy if he proves me wrong.

* Unlike a lot of the obscure stuff I sometimes read, I think this book is pretty popular with a lot of people.  At least two of my co-workers have also read it, and they also praised it highly.

* Add this book to my list of historical fiction books.

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