The officer is Georges Picquart, a major in the French army in 1895 when the story begins. The spy could be one of two people - either Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish army officer wrongfully convicted of passing secrets to Germany, or alternatively the real spy, another French army major.

At a time when anti-semitism was rife and not particularly frowned upon, and when diplomatic relations between France and Germany were very low due to the latter's annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine regions, the wishy washy evidence against Alfred Dreyfus was enough to have him convicted of treason in spying for Germany. Public humiliation and exile followed. Georges, who was involved in the arrest and the trial of Dreyfus, was promoted to the rank of colonel and became chief of an intelligence unit within the French military. This appointment gave him access to all the material and evidence against Dreyfus, the result being he uncovered a conspiracy that covered the tracks of the real spy and made Dreyfus the scapegoat. The first half of the novel is Georges discovering these facts, the second half is what he tries to do about this massive miscarriage of justice and bring the true spy out into the open. Very, very John Le Carre.

The case was an absolute sensation in its day. The overwelming negative public opinion towards Dreyfus, mainly on account of his being Jewish, made it very difficult for Dreyfus' supporters of which there were quite a few, to highlight the injustice that had been done. Within the military Georges's whistleblowing nearly cost him his life, but eventually in 1899 Dreyfus was freed, and in 1906 officially exonerated.

Robert Harris, a prolific writer, has made good use of his early journalistic career in now writing excellent historical fiction. He has the ability to make history come alive, weaving actual events and settings around the lives of real and made up characters. Even though this book is classified as a novel, all the characters were real people, and everything that happens in the book is also true, the author drawing on personal letters, police reports, newspaper articles, official documents, court transcripts. Despite all the factual material, he has still managed to instill character, personality and thought processes into his main characters, so it does not feel that one is reading a historical account, but rather a great story. I wouldn't say it is a page turner, full of excitement, intrigue and action; rather it is quietly gripping, sinister, and highlights quite scarily, how dangerous it is for one man who, singlehandedly, decides to take on the might of the French military playing them at their own game.

The Dreyfus Affair should an object lesson for school students, as its strange mix of religious prejudice, Franco-German politics, passion, duty, law, justice, journalism and real suffering would open the eyes of many young idealists. This fictionalised account is one of Harris’s best novels as it strips away the conspiracy early on and focuses on the the cost involved in rescuing Dreyfus, and perhaps France, from the appalling circumstances the Affair created.

Good and detailed, like you would expect from Robert Harris. A bit spoiled for me because I had read about the events on which it was based a long ways back and, on reading, my brain kept coming up with spoilers from that knowledge. Such is the risk of things based on history.

It felt like it had more depth than other Robert Harris I've read. An incredibly powerful and complex moment in history as an increasingly anti-Semitic France made a scapegoat of Dreyfuss for every humiliation they had suffered since the end of the Napoleonic era carried off like a deft Smiley-era John le Carre. Really admirably blended history and drama.

as a page-turning conspiracy thriller, good. the writing, not really. but a fun and interesting read. of course, now i wonder how true it all really is....

To tell you the truth, I was put off by the title. What a strange idea… Why did Plon choose not to translate the English title, An Officer and a spy? Did they think that Officier et Espion sounded too dramatic, too thriller-ish for such a serious topic? Did they want something more directly related to the Affaire? Ah, the elitist and arcane French publishing industry…

I cannot sum up the Affaire here in a few lines. The Wikipedia entry provides ample details for those who want a basic background. “D.” actually points to the single unique material basis on which Captain Dreyfus was convinced of selling state secrets in 1895 (“Cette canaille de D…”) and sentenced to a life in exile, in the dreadful bagne of Devil Island off French Guyana. The Affaire Dreyfus was and remains a stain on French history. A stain? This is actually the wrong word. A stain can be brushed off, cleaned up, removed, erased. The Affaire Dreyfus cannot be erased. It is not that kind of stain. It is a bald spot, rather: a scratch on a varnish, revealing the underlying layer of racism and antisemitism that corrupts the heart of French culture.

In my recent review of Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe 2, I broached on this topic. The list of anti-Semitic writers in France between 1870 and 1945 is damning: Edouard Drumont of course, but also Charles Maurras, Paul Valery, Paul Morand, Robert Brasillac, Marcel Jouhandeau, Jean De La Varende… Many, like Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, sit on the fence. The list culminates with Louis-Ferdinand Celine obviously, but read them carefully enough and you will add to the list some names much dearer to my heart, like Georges Simenon. Even Blaise Cendrars…

Seigneur dans les ghettos grouille la tourbe des Juifs
Ils viennent de Pologne et sont tous fugitifs.

Je le sais bien, ils ont fait ton Procès;
Mais je t’assure, ils ne sont pas tout à fait mauvais.

The book itself is every bit as readable and entertaining as any of Robert Harris’s novels: the style, in Nathalie Zimmermann’s translation, is impeccable. So is the characterization. The historical context is well outlined, the portrait of Paris suitably faithful. Harris uses the Zola-esque technique of distilling his authorial opinion through descriptions. Paris, at the time of the first trial, stinks, and we are reminded of it at regular intervals. The stench had many causes boiling down to the speed of the city expansion. It was so fast that there was no time to move the excrement dumps: the Montfaucon dump, right inside Paris and abandoned since 1848, was still full in 1895; the new Bondy Forest dump was full too, its waters spilling into the Canal de l’Ourq; many industries recycled the excrements, rejecting their residues into the Seine or on Gennevilliers’ farm fields; other factories worked equally polluting material (fertilisers, tanneries, pigment makers…). Paris’s stench issue escalated to such a point that, in 1896, Paris’s prefect Lepine created the “Commission des odeurs de Paris”. Most problems were not solved before 1905. This is the exact time span of the Affaire Dreyfus. Harris plays on it in the classic fashion of a 19th century novelist: yes, the Affaire Dreyfus is a dreadful business, its emanations falling down on all French people. Oh, these despicable anti-Semites, oh the shame of France and Europe, oh, the paved road to the Holocaust. Oh…

Albeit cruelly true, the era antisemitism is a cliché which I refuse to put down to Harris’s non-Frenchness. It certainly plays a role. Suffice to read Harris’s book reviews. French and British reviews have very different approaches. While the latter are uncritical of the author’s choices, French reviewers bring a lot of interesting points to the debate. Again, one could exonerate British reviewers by saying that the Affaire Dreyfus is a French affair, but this actually doesn’t account for the fact that it has been widely studied by English and American top historians. Actually, modern studies of the Affaire are all in English and so are most of Harris’s resources, from George R. Whyte’s The Dreyfus Affair to Ruth Harris’s The Man on Devil’s Island. Putting Harris’s lack of originality in his approach on his ignorance of French context and culture is simply not true. We have to consider Harris aware of and responsible for his choices. And his choice, with An Officer and a spy, is to tell us about the Affaire Dreyfus without telling us about Dreyfus. The whole novel revolves around commandant Picquart, the French officer who risked his career and life to defend Dreyfus and fight what he – rightfully !- saw as a judicial error and injustice.

In the end, writing historical fiction is about what is left aside as much as what is being told. More than any other, historical fiction is an ideological weapon. No author is innocent. If Harris chooses to portray Picquart as a grumpy hero determined to do his duty despite his superiors and the threats on his life, and Dreyfus as a bland, slightly autistic rich boy, it is not by chance. He is well documented. But he chose to follow the main narrative, popularized by French historians ever since the end of the Affaire as a way to explain France’s hatred of Dreyfus by something else than antisemitism (“he was not a very likable man”) and to restore the French army’s image (“the army system is rotten but its spirit is pure”). One can admire Harris’s proficiency in providing his historical lessons but one cannot exonerate him from choosing the easy path. Picquart might be a hero (debatable) but heroes don’t explain history. The Affaire Dreyfus is not about Picquart. It is about Dreyfus, Judaism and France. To see these remain in the background is my only regret about this very enjoyable novel. But it is a big one.

I was obliquely aware of the significance of the Dreyfus affair in French history, and had encountered passing references to it in Papillon among others. This book is an exceedingly readable version of events which dragged on over a decade.

I was not very good at history until I discovered the historical fiction genre. This is a well done expose on corruption and redemption.

Harris is a crafty and elegant storyteller, bringing late 19th century Paris to life in this absorbing novelization of the Dreyfus affair.