An Officer and a Spy – Robert Harris (Hutchinson Random House 2013)

The sufferings that you endured on that terrible day will be graven into the memory of mankind.

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This book really grew on me, to the point at which I was genuinely worried justice would not be done before its conclusion. Without revealing if such worry was necessary, I really rate Harris’ ability to draw in his readers. It took a few chapters for late 19th century Paris to absorb me but, once I was in, the setting and plot exerted a powerful grip.

The first-person narrator, George Picquart, seems the perfect man for the French army: well educated, handsome, confident, principled, competent and devoted to his job. As a result, he becomes the youngest colonel in France soon after the story begins. Unfortunately for him and France (and Alfred Dreyfus, in particular), the army contains elements that are inimical to his positive qualities; as this becomes clear to him, he has to decide if he will risk his career to resist them.

The first event of the narrative is the so-called ‘degradation’ of Dreyfus, a French captain on trial for being a German spy, who’s subjected to public humiliation and then sentenced to a particularly brutal imprisonment. Picquart is the army officer detailed to relay news of the military court’s verdict to General Mercier, the Minister of War. When asked ‘So it really is all over?’ by Mercier, Picquart replies ‘It’s over’ before adding to the reader ‘And so it begins.’

One strength of the book is how the interdependence of Picquart and Dreyfus emerges, despite their existing thousands of miles apart for most of it. They do not really know one another; in fact, their few interactions have resulted in low-level animosity and a mutual agreement to have no further contact. The unexpected appointment of Picquart as chief of the Statistical Section (the espionage department of the French civil service) leads to his peeling back the layers of government secrecy surrounding ‘the Dreyfus affair’ and discovering much that is shocking and abhorrent beneath. ‘June arrives. The air warms up and very soon Paris starts to reek of shit.’

Other strengths are the detail and symbolism of the settings, the most important of which is Paris. There are musical salons, picnics in the Bois de Bologne and the state visit of Tsar Nicholas, but summer in the capital is oppressive and repulsive: ‘the smell…settles…even on one’s tongue, so that everything tastes of corruption.’ And, as Picquart moves into the gloomy office of his ailing predecessor, he feels he is ‘wearing the outfit of a dead man.’ Instructed to ‘feed’ the Dreyfus file so the government can answer any objections to the conviction, he starts to discover a virulent prejudice that has affected proceedings against the convicted spy, best expressed by his predecessor when he tells Picquart ‘the nation is no longer pure.’

There is an excellent section set in Tunisia where Picquart gets sent, and there are also excellent characters – soldiers, spies, lawyers, and politicians (the number of which necessitates a ‘Dramatis Personae’ page) – most of whom turn out to be very different to how they appear.