An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris

Published in Great Britain in 2013; published by Knopf on January 28, 2014

An Officer and a Spy is a fictionalized account of the Dreyfus affair. Since the unjust conviction of Alfred Dreyfus is a matter of record, the novel holds few surprises. It nevertheless tells a compelling story and serves as a reminder that claims of national security and the need for secret trials too often mask the weakness of the evidence upon which the government relies, as well as the improper motivations that contribute to the prosecution. In the case of Dreyfus, anti-Semitism and the desire for political gain fueled the false accusation that Dreyfus passed military secrets to the Germans and encouraged investigators to discount evidence that pointed to the guilt of a less consequential suspect.

An Officer and a Spy tells the story in the first-person, from the perspective of Major Marie-Georges Picquart, who attended (and played a small part in) Dreyfus' court martial. After Picquart is promoted and placed in charge of the Statistical Section -- the French military's espionage service -- his new job brings him into contact with disturbing evidence that casts doubt upon Dreyfus' guilt. Neither Picquart's growing realization that the real traitor is still at large nor the likelihood that an innocent man has been imprisoned are of interest to the officers whose careers depend on covering up their mistakes -- even if the cover-up requires them to destroy Picquart.

The drama in An Officer and a Spy is low-key but palpable. More important than the historical facts (which are deftly handled but not really the subject of fiction) is Picquart's internal struggle, his burgeoning sense of guilt at the role he played in securing Dreyfus' conviction and the career boost he received from it. The conflict between Picquart's duty to his superiors (who just want him to shut up) and his higher duty to truth and justice provides the novel's moral focus as well as its dramatic tension. That Picquart's life is complicated by an affair he has long been having with a friend's wife adds an element of interest to his character, in part because it provides his enemies with ammunition to use against him.

Robert Harris sums up the novel's thesis in a sentence near the end: "There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight." Picquart seems fated to lose everything he values -- everything except his integrity and sense of honor. Through Picquart, Harris makes the case that fighting what appears to be a hopeless fight is preferable to surrendering virtue. Justice is often difficult to achieve -- sometimes it is won belatedly, sometimes only in the judgment of history, and sometimes not even then -- but the fight for justice is an end in itself. An Officer and a Spy is a stirring illustration of that lesson.

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