An Officer and a Spy: From the Sunday Times bestselling author
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Description
An Officer and a Spy is his take on the infamous Dreyfuss Affair. This real-life turn-of-the-century French scandal was, when finally laid bare, seen as the archetypal example of injustice and cruelty inflicted by the state.
Dreyfuss was a Jewish senior French army officer with an impeccable military record. Yet somehow, he found himself ensnared in a conspiracy to blame him for a spying imbroglio. Secrets had been passed to the German embassy in Paris and Dreyfuss was framed for the crime. He narrowly escaped execution and instead was transported to the notorious Devil's Island, where he spent his days in solitary confinement. He very nearly went insane.
An Officer and a Spy is told through the eyes of army high-flier Georges Picquart. He is detailed to personally witness Dreyfuss's horrible humiliation before deportation he is publicly stripped of his badges of rank, his sword broken in two, spat upon and abused by a baying crowd.
Surely there could be no way back from such degradation?
Review by Richard Madeley
I loved the character of Georges Picquart. He is clever, charming and brave, and takes nothing at face value. After making his private report to the French High Command on the gruesome details of Dreyfuss's humiliation, he is astonished to be told that the prisoner confessed to being a spy to another, junior, officer.
Picquart refuses to believe this. Dreyfuss has vigorously protested his innocence from the moment he was arrested.
It is the beginning of a slow realisation that a terrible miscarriage of justice has occurred. As a man of honour, Picquart will risk everything to uncover the truth.
That's the plot. But the period detail Harris uses as the backdrop to his story is exquisite. He describes Paris in the late 1890s in vivid colours and odours. This may have been in the golden era of La Belle Epoch, but Paris in summer, for all its frills and cafe-culture and elegance, stank like a sewer.
We care almost as much about Picquart as we do about poor imprisoned Dreyfuss. Picquart's affairs (he is unmarried), his initial horror at being posted from honourable military duties to head of the seedy French espionage service, his clashes with a high command and political elite that wants the lid kept good and tight on the Dreyfuss Affair.
This is a completely absorbing and thrilling piece of writing. Robert Harris you've done it again.
Review by Judy Finnigan
About the Author
More Details
- Contributor: Robert Harris
- Imprint: Arrow Books Ltd
- ISBN13: 9780099580881
- Number of Pages: 624
- Packaged Dimensions: 129x198x37mm
- Packaged Weight: 426
- Format: Paperback
- Publisher: Cornerstone
- Release Date: 2014-05-08
- Binding: Paperback / softback
- Biography: Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.
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