The Dreyfus Affair constitutes one of those moments of history that a lot people know of rather than much about. Even among well educated people there's often little more than a headline understanding of antisemitism, a French miscarriage of justice, Devil's Island and Emile Zola's famous attack on the French establishment's conspiracy against the Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus: J'accuse. But the real story is like something from the imagination of Alexandre Dumas, full of intrigue, wrongful imprisonment and heroic effort to establish the truth. In other words, it's a thriller and there is no more deft hand at work in that genre than Robert Harris. But unlike previous Harris thrillers, this is not a historical counterfactual, but, save for a few small fictional details, an almost documentary-like assemblage of what actually took place. Andrew Anthony writing in the Guardian
Val says It is true I know of the Dreyfus Affair and a little about it but Robert Harris is such a good read that I look forward to knowing more about the affair.
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