Review: An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

[KLyons1]

Ordinarily, a story about treason ends with discovery of the traitor and the consequences of their betrayal. In An Officer and a Spy, however, Robert Harris chooses to open with this conclusion. He has chosen the infamous Dreyfus affair as his subject, and that story was far from over when Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced.

Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer in 1894 when he was accused of committing treason by passing military documents to the Germans. Then as now, capture of a traitor did not pass unnoticed by the press, and developments in the case were not only followed avidly by the press and public alike, but were also influenced by them. Harris leads into his story with an Author’s Note indicating that he “aims to use the techniques of a novel to retell the true story of the Dreyfus affair,” that his dramatis personae are (or were) all real, and that most of the events related did actually occur.

Because the problem was that Dreyfus was innocent. Since the army insisted that he was the traitor, influencing the court-martial proceedings to ensure his conviction and then engaging in a cover-up when his innocence was proven, the case grew and gained international attention. Dreyfus was one of the few Jewish officers in the army, leading to this case being used as an example of rampant anti-Semitism; Harris shows that the story’s scope extends much farther and includes far more issues.

After Dreyfus began serving his sentence, Col. Georges Picquart was made head of the Military Intelligence Service, which still had plenty of work worrying about what the Germans knew and what they might do next (and that’s without mentioning the Russians, also a source of concern, albeit for different reasons). As a result, Picquart gradually realizes that the traitor he is chasing has been active all along, and thus becomes aware of the gross miscarriage of justice suffered by Dreyfus.

Harris uses Picquart to narrate. Since Picquart was involved with the original case as well as driving the effort to clear Dreyfus, he was privy to most information, which helps the reader navigate the story’s developments. And an expert navigator is needed, given the number of officers and officials involved as the story takes more twists than most Hollywood creations would deem plausible. (Some aspects would be described as Kafka-esque, save that Kafka was born in 1883 and not yet writing at the time of these events.) Picquart’s commitment to his country, and to the need for the truth to be known, is the driving force for the events portrayed here. His first-person narration also provides one of the novel’s few limitations, as his focus remains firmly on the case and cause, thus depriving readers of a sense of the case’s impact on the others involved.

An Officer and a Spy is more informative than many novels, is well-written, and has many details that will surprise the reader. Since it raises questions about abuses of power, judicial transparency, and how far people will go in their commitment to a narrative even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it will leave readers with plenty of food for thought (or book group discussion).

I would give it 3.5 out of 4 stars.