Book of the Month: An Officer and a Spy (Robert Harris)

An Officer and A Spy is the first novel I read of Robert Harris. Harris shot to international fame with his debut novel, Fatherland, and, as the cliché goes, has never looked back, since. Harris, when he was a BBC-reporter in the 1980s, wrote a few non-fiction books, one of which was the endlessly riveting Selling Hitler, which I have reviewed on this blog.

I picked up An Officer and A Spy, not so much because it was written by Harris, or, not entirely because of that, as because the subject interested me. The Drefus Affair, which took place in France at the turn of last century, is one of those historical event, I should imagine, many would be aware of, or, heard of, but of which, most would not know the details. (That Harris wrote the novel also made the decision easy; I might not have been inclined to read the book if it were written by someone whose name I did not recognise).

Alfred Drefus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was convicted in 1895 of treason. Drefus was found guilty of passing on French army secrets to the Germans. He was sentenced to solitary confinement on the Devil’s Island, an ice-free island near the north-eastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula (near Venezuela), where he was subjected to emotional torture of very impressive proportions—Drefus was forbidden to speak to anyone during the entire period of his incarceration. The Drefus affair, as it came to be known, aroused strong public emotions in France at the time, and public opinion was sharply divided as to whether justice was done. Latent Anti-Semitism as well as hurt French pride and the inevitable French paranoia towards the Germans, following the heavy defeat of the French army by the Germans in the 1870 war (resulting in Germany appropriating French regions bordering with Germany), played a vital part in how Drefus was treated and viewed throughout the trial. That Drefus was a German Jewish did not help. The Drefus case is considered as a great miscarriage of justice in French history. Emil Zola was one of the many influential intellectuals in the French public life who were disturbed by the handling of the investigation by the French army, and took up the case of the convicted Jewish officer, which eventually led to the exoneration of Drefus.

It is highly likely that the higher echelons of the French army were aware that Drefus was innocent, but allowed, nevertheless, for him to be the fall-guy, and, when they became aware that truth might come out, went to great length to suppress it.

It would, however, be wrong to say that everyone in the French army was complicit in the conspiracy (and, by association, an anti-Semite). There were French army officers who were uneasy about what happened to Drefus, and showed great courage and righteousness, in the face of intimidation and threats by the increasingly unsettled French army, in revealing truth.

The French army-officer who played a major role in the re-trial and eventual exoneration of Alfred Drefus, whose name has disappeared under the sand of time, was Colonel Georges Picquart, the protagonist of Harris’s absorbing novel.

The story is narrated from the eyes of Colonel Georges Picquart, of French army. Picquart comes to hold the belief that Alfred Derfus did not receive a fair trial. Picaquart, a member of French army’s General Staff, has witnessed the court martial of Drefus in his capacity as a reporter. Within six months of Drefus’s conviction Picaquart is promoted to the position of the chief of the operational arm of French army’s intelligence section, known as statistical section. Picquart has no, or not many, warm feelings towards Drefus. Drefus is a graduate of the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole de Guerre (French army’s war college) where Picquart was his teacher. Drefus, with his somewhat standoffish manner and a tendency towards viewing any unfavourable decision as resulting from crypto-anti-Semitism, has not made it easy for others to develop warm feelings towards him, and Picquart is no exception. Picquart, the novel hints, might have had a smidgen of anti-Semitism in him—all the more remarkable, then, that he fights tenaciously and even risks his own military career to prove the innocence of Drefus, once he is satisfied that Drefus is the fall guy, and the real traitor is someone else. Picquart has always believed that the case against Drefus was weak—he has told the French war minister, General Mercier, who has had Drefus arrested in an unseemly hurry in the absence of any clear proof of Drefus’s guilt, that Drefus’s acquittal was the likely outcome of the court martial. Picquart is, therefore, surprised and uneasy when Drefus is found guilty. When Picquart takes over the reins of the statistical section he sees the photocopy of the letter, which was considered in the court martial to be the incontrovertible evidence of Drefus’s guilt. Picquart realises that the handwriting is not Drefus’s but that of one Major Ferdinand Esterhazy, a feckless, inveterate liar, whom Picquart suspects to be the man who was passing the secrets to Germans. This had indeed been the case. At the time of the court martial several hand-writing experts had rejected the notion that handwriting in the letter was Drefus’s, until an obliging one came along and gave the army the opinion they wanted to hear. An army officer lied to the tribunal, and, just in case if this was not enough, a secret file, full of forged documents and confirming Drefus’s guilt, was passed on to the tribunal, with full knowledge of Mercier, keeping the legal team representing Drefus completely in the dark. As Picquart’s suspicions grow that the wrong man has been sent to gaol, he also begins to suspect that those who conspired to frame Drefus are in his own department and, backed up by the powerful army brass, will do the same to him. Picquart begins to carry out his secret investigation. As Picquart delves deeper into he realises that the rot goes right to the top of the French army. Picquart begins his fight against echelons of French army to prove the innocence of a man he has disliked but who, Picquart believes, is innocent. 

Robert Harris has narrated a gripping tale that conflates the historical narrative as well as the personal perspective (of Picquart). Harris’s prose is dry, sardonic, but also elegant. The Georges Picquart that emerges from this narrative is emotionally aloof, at times cynical, but also someone with a strong sense of where his moral compass should be and uncompromising on his principles once he makes up his mind.  If I have to make criticism I’d say that the novel does not give you a good enough idea of the rabid anti-Semitism that was affecting at least part of the French society at the time. One, therefore, might wonder whether the decision of the French army to make Drefus the fall guy was motivated only by cynical opportunism of the army combined with the determination of the army generals to not be seen to have made a mistake or whether some of the higher army officers were also affected by the anti-Semite fervour.  Harris made the decision to make Picquart, and not Drefus, the hero of his story. Picquart, in some ways an army-insider himself, and, more pertinently, is focused on the injustice he felt was done to Drefus. Picquart is uninterested in the wider, cultural ramifications of anti-Semitism that might have influenced the decision of the French army to scapegoat Drefus. The absence of the details of historical backdrop to the Drefus affair, thus, is understandable, but it still seems like a gap.

The Drefus affair might have happened more than a century ago, but it is still relevant in the twenty-first century. in the As I type this, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is embroiled in a controversy whereby he stands accused of either deliberately being or allowing himself to be the figurehead of racist Anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, particularly amongst his noisy supporters).

An Officer and A Spy is a very satisfying read. It is a historical novel which reads like a thriller. Very much recommended.

Brexit Madness

Britain’s painful and protracted divorce from the European Union (EU) grinds on.

You don’t need to be blessed with clairvoyance to figure out that Brexit is going to cause economic damage to both the parties. The EU is going to lose the second biggest contributor (after Germany) to its budget once the UK leaves. As for the UK, barring the bonkers Brexiteers from the Conservative party—madder than a stadium-full of hatters (on acid)—no one thinks that Brexit won’t cause significant damage to the country’s economy.

The latest twist to what is already a high-octane melodrama is the shift announced by Comrade Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition party in the UK, in its position towards the customs union. A couple of days before the Comrade’s speech, Labour’s Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer (who wears the lugubrious expression of someone who buried his mother in the morning), announced in a television interview that under a Labour Government, Britain would stay in a customs union and single market. Starmer also informed in the BBC interview (with the air of the doctor breaking the news of advance cancer) that free movement of people would have to end; however, he added, there would be ‘easy movement’ of people (the doctor explaining that there were first-rate hospices). He neglected to explain what this ‘easy’ movement would look like.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, who, by consensus, is born in the wrong decade and in the wrong country—he would have been so much happier if he were born as McDonnellowich and been Stalin’s henchman—revealed himself to be a cunning linguist, and helpfully clarified that Starmer used the indefinite article ‘a’ instead the definite article ‘the’ while discussing customs union and single market.

What did McDennellowich mean? His leader, Comrade Corbyn—once described by an Iranian freedom of speech, whom Corbyn inadvertently exposed in an interview on live Iranian television and who ended up spending time in Iranian prison (reputed to be only slightly better than Luton), as a useful idiot—clarified a day later in a speech, while inexpertly reading from the autocue. Labour would negotiate a bespoke customs union (and presumably a bespoke single market) with the EU.

Comrade Corbyn invited us to believe that under the bespoke customs union there would be frictionless trade between not just Northern Ireland and republic of Ireland, but also between the UK and the EU. The good news does not stop here. The UK will be able to strike bilateral deals with other countries (while remaining in ‘a’ customs union) at the same time, and EU bureaucrats would nod their heads, give an indulgent smile, and say, ‘Go on you rascals!’

Quite how this ‘bespoke’ arrangement would look like Corbyn did not care to explain in the speech, perhaps because he was keeping his cards too close to his chest, or, more likely, because he had no clue (McDennellowich had not explained that to him). But we are not to question this. We must have the faith that the Messiah will deliver. If you don’t you are obviously a capitalist traitor, who, no doubt, supported Iraq war and Blair.

Corbyn’s about-turn on customs union predictably raised the hackles of the Tory nutters who are in the grip of Revanchist fury (turned on themselves) ever since the referendum happened (almost two years ago). The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, took himself to air, the BBC Radio 4, the next day, and removed the last vestiges of doubts from the listeners’ minds that his grasp of Brexit was slightly worse than Donald Trump’s grasp on . . . well, pretty much everything. When the interviewer Mishal Husain (she of seductive voice) asked Johnson about the border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, Johnson launched into a long-winded blather, which, even by his high standards, was a spectacular twaddle. He compared the border situation between Northern Ireland and the Republic Ireland to that of two Burroughs of London, and went on to crow how he, Boris, when he was the mayor of London, saved the situation by bringing congestion charges! Husain, unwilling to accept that the foreign secretary was serious, asked Johnson whether he was serious, and Johnson assured her that he couldn’t be more serious. I have seen and heard a few interviews of Boris Johnson (which always leave the interviewers, from Jeremy Paxman to Mishal Husain, shaking their heads in disbelief), and have always wondered whether he is like a not-altogether-stupid-but-lazy-as-f**k pupil, who never takes the trouble to prepare the subject, and hopes to get through by verbiage (hoping that bullshit, when continued without pause, will always baffle brain). It rarely works, but Johnson seems incapable of learning and changing his indolent ways.

In the BBC interview, Johnson was frothing at the mouth at what he saw as Comrade Corbyn’s treachery over the customs union (guessing, probably with good reason, that the ‘useful idiot’ would be persuaded, next, by Starmer (and those in Labour who have some brains) to change his stance over the single market (replacing with ‘a’ single market). Johnson, no doubt trembling with righteous indignation, accused Comrade Corbyn of cynical opportunism, because Corbyn had shifted Labour’s position to that announced in Labour’s manifesto in the 2016 general election: Labour would leave the customs union. Johnson accusing Corbyn of cynical opportunism is a bit like Trump accusing the North Korean potato-head of being mentally deranged. It also suggested the innocent assumption that people bother themselves with manifestos of political parties (and remember them after a year). Finally, it also indicated that Johnson had not cottoned on to the difference between the definite and indefinite articles, as elucidated by the linguist McDennellowich (to be fair to Johnson, no one had).

The trouble for Johnson and Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary (he is an idiot, alright, but difficult to see what use he can be of to anyone), is that so far there is not so much as a whiff of the free trade deals we have been hearing so much about, and which Dr Fox is presenting to the heads of different countries round the globe (including but not limited to the dictator in Philippines, who once referred to Barak Obama as one can only assume his (the dictator’s, not Obama’s) favourite part of female anatomy).

It was left to Sir Martin Donnelly, a highly experienced civil servant, who, until last year, was the permanent secretary in Dr Fox’s Department of International Trade, to tell some home truths to the fantasists in the two parties. Brexit and giving up membership of single market and customs union for future free trade deals elsewhere, Mr Donnelly said, was like giving up a three-course meal now for a packet of crisps and promise of future. Three-fifth of the UK’s current trade, Mr Donnelley explained, was with the EU or countries with which the EU (as a bloc) has preferential deals with. It beggars belief that the hard Brexiteers are prepared to piss on this in the delusion that the rest of the world is queuing up to strike deals with the UK. As for Corbyn’s nonsense about ‘frictionless trade’ Donnelley warned that it is not even a legal term. Having your cake and eating it, as Donnelley rightly observed, is not an option in the real world, not that it will penetrate Corbyn’s thick skull.

Theresa May might go to India and wear as many bright-coloured saris as she wants, or she might go to China and pose next to the Chinese dragon (looking only marginally more scary), there is no sign, yet, that these two Asian giants are in a mood to give any definite assurance to the UK. As for America, with whom the UK politicians fondly believe we have a special relationship, with Trump in the White House, we will soon find out that the special relationship is the same as the McDonald’s has with cows. Trump does not believe in special relationships. He believes in deals. And any deal Trump has anything to do with has only one winner. Trump.