An Officer and a Spy, a novel by Robert Harris

 

An Officer and a Spy is the novelized story of the infamous Dreyfus Affair, one of the black marks on the modern history of France and the French Army.

 

I often hear friends say:  I only read non-fiction because fiction is just a made up story that has little to no significance other than entertainment. I beg to differ.  I’m a history fan and read a fair amount of it, but I’ve found that often history books trap you in heavy details, dismissing the personal aspects of the story.  Novelized histories, on the other hand, wrap the reader in personalities that explore the inner workings of the historical tableau.  Yes, that is true even in the historical romance genre, with a glance into how people lived and died and loved and lost. Historical romance novelists collect a trove of reference material.  As an example of historical novels that make you “live in the time,” is A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I often say, unless you have read that book, you will never understand how the French revolution affected French society and the people who lived through it.

 

A Soldier and a Spy is another novel that takes you inside and makes you live through the intrigues and government of the Third French Republic of the 1890s.  Yes, it is very much a history lesson, but one with a human face.

 

Perhaps you are familiar with the injustice done to Captain Alfred Dreyfus.  For those who don’t yet know the story, in the 1890s, Dreyfus was charged and convicted with being a spy.  He was stripped of his rank in the most public of places.  His disgrace complete, he was sent to the far away Devil’s Island,  a tiny and isolated place where he was kept under horrible conditions for years.

 

This is where the novel unfolds. The French Army Lieutenant  Colonel George Picquart. discovers that there be another spy in the army.  In his quest to identify the second spy, he uncovers mountains of evidence and deceit that rises to the pinnacle of both the army and the government.

 

The novel turns and twists as the truth is found and washed away and found again, always doubtful, always less than the full truth.

 

In this novel, author Robert Harris leads the reader through dust clouds of discovery to the startling ending.

 

If you enjoy spy stories, you’ll be thrilled and astonished at the reality of the complications of proof and truth and the consequences of both.

 

An Officer and a Spy is a great read that will keep you up at night and linger in your dreams. Besides the quest for truth, the novel is a valuable, personalized history lesson that echoes in today’s headlines.

 

If it isn’t in your city library, you can easily find very reasonably priced used copies online.

An Officer and A Spy - Thrilling!

I read.  A lot.  Well, not as much as my wife, who downs romance novels like a starving woman with a bag of potato chips. Weak characters?  Limp plot?  Doesn’t matter.  On she slogs to the final page.

For my taste, a book has to grab me from page one and not let go.  The harder it grabs, the better I like it.  An Officer and A Spy, by Robert Harris is such a book.  Once I started, my life was no longer my own.  Thrown back into the Paris of La Belle Époque and the maelstrom of the Alfred Dreyfus case, I could not escape.  Food went uneaten.  Sleep came when I passed out and the book collapsed on my chest.  I was in Paris, smelling the horse manure in the steamy streets, sitting in the back rooms of the powerful, drinking coffee in the cafes, all the while being pulled along by the uncomfortable feeling that a deeply sinister wrong could never be righted.

You’ve no doubt heard of Robert Harris, the English author of historical novels.  Fatherland ring any bells?

Harris’ latest effort is a novel constructed around a societal monster. It is 1895. The protagonist, Major Georges Picquart stands in the boisterous crowd of onlookers as Captain Dreyfus is publically stripped of rank and honor.  He’s a spy.  He’s a Jew. Suspected.  Convicted of crimes against France.

No one, including Major Picquart, has the least bit of sympathy.  This betrayer of his country is getting what he deserves.  Shame.  Dishonor.  Imprisonment, and not just any prison, Devil’s Island.

You surely know from your high school history the short version of the story.  The beginning, and the end perhaps.  But even with that knowledge, this thriller is no less thrilling.  History, in the form of a novel, lays bare the conspiracies, the obstinacy, the espionage, the treason, and the suffering. Reaching inside the French Army and Government, you’ll find the filthy, tangled details.  The soul of a twisted story.

This tale of fighting the good fight, of revelations that turn enemies to friends, and friends to co-conspirators will hold you spellbound, while it strips the packaging off terms like goodness, justice, duty, and loyalty.

Robert Harris, whether writing of imagined monsters, or monstrous situations is a powerful literary force.  In An Officer and A Spy, his words grab you by your senses and sweep you along in the whirlwind of history.   You’ll swear, you’ll sweat.  Awake or asleep, this tale won’t let you rest.