2017 Reading Challenge discussion

Stripped of sidebars and unerringly focussed on the essential elements that make the Dreyfus Affair vivid and intelligible, Harris' novel is compelling, easy to read and rewarding for both leisure readers and knowledge seekers.

Detailled enough to warrant its own board game, the outrageous miscarriage of justice known as the Dreyfus Affair pitted the French army and its popular supporters against passionate and enlightened defenders of justice in the last years of the 19th century. The Jewish Alfred Dreyfus, a not particularly likeable Army captain, was convicted in a military court, based on misinterpreted and manufactured evidence, of passing military secrets to the Germans, victors in the then-recent Franco-Prussian war. The Army then closed ranks around this false and inept judgment, and defended it resoundingly throughout the discovery, trial and Army-induced acquittal of the real culprit.

The novel is narrated by Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, himself no fan of Dreyfus, who unpeels the tissue of distortions that form the evidence against the captain. Eventually journalist Émile Zola of J'accuse fame, future Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and other notable citizens of the period join Picquart as he seeks to "do his duty" and clear the Army of cynical and self-serving leadership.

The manner in which Harris makes us aware of the context of the case, an army seeking to prepare itself and rouse support for the next fight against Germany and a nation increasingly drawn to antisemitism, is particularly adept. And his evocation of contemporary Paris and Vesailles, of Picquart's enjoyment of the birds singing in the garden of the War Ministry and his pleasure in the panoramic view of the Bois de Boulogne and the Eiffel Tower from his cell in Mont-Valérien, helps to keep us anchored in the time and place of the events.

Harris has eight other novels under his belt, including a "what if Hitler had won?" speculation. I'm looking forward to reading them.