⇒ PDF An Officer and a Spy Robert Harris 9780091944551 Books

An Officer and a Spy Robert Harris 9780091944551 Books

Download As PDF : An Officer and a Spy Robert Harris 9780091944551 Books

An Officer and a Spy Robert Harris 9780091944551 Books

If you pick this book up and think you're going to put it down again, think again. A combination of spy, detective and court room genres, that actually concerns an actual historical event. It addresses the moral complexities of obeying orders, going along to benefit one's career versus taking the moral right course. In this respect the subjects explored here are timeless. What is courage even in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic and societal resistance? This novel explores these timeless, historical themes with actual historical characters that are expertly and believably fleshed out. If you've heard of the Dreyfus affair but are not sure what it was or think it was some dusty historical anomaly that has no relevance to today, think again. It is supremely relevant to today's politics. This book would make an excellent film, but read it, you won't want it to end.


Tags : An Officer and a Spy [Robert Harris] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b> What Part did I play in his ruin? A new historical thriller from Robert Harris. </b>Paris. 1895. On a freezing January morning,Robert Harris,An Officer and a Spy,Hutchinson,0091944554,Fiction Historical

An Officer and a Spy Robert Harris 9780091944551 Books Reviews

This book has all the ingredients of a top notch spy thriller - intelligence services, secret agents, betrayals, intrigue, life and death, cover-ups, sex (a little, anyway), murder, suspense - except it's all true. And according to the author, all the characters, even the minor ones, are real. The most interesting aspect is that, although it reads like a modern adventure, it actually takes place in 1890's France.

The story is told in first person, present tense. This infrequently used technique adds to the immediacy (or "presence") of the book. By doing this, the author causes you to feel as if you are in the scene, and you in effect live the book as the main character lives the tale. Further, the text is filled with rich, colorful language which is a pleasure to read. It is full of period and colloquial words and constructions, transporting your mind into the era while you read.

It is about a man named Alfred Dreyfus, a French army major accused of treason, and is told by another French officer, Marie-Georges Picquart, who jeopardizes his career to get to the bottom of the story. There are innumerable plot twists and changes in direction, events unfold in unexpected ways, and the outcome is most certainly not what you think. The main characters are exceedingly well developed, causing you to know them and feel their triumphs and especially their tribulations. By the time you reach the end of the book (which spans most of the final decade of the nineteenth century) you have come to intimately know some new people, you are appalled at the corruption and subterfuge that exists at the highest levels of government, you are thrilled by the accomplishments and successes of the heroes, and you are disappointed by unfortunate realities that can't be written away in a fiction-based novel.

This book is a pleasure to read. I read a few books by this author a few years ago, then rediscovered him with this one. He is very good at what he does. Read it, and take your time to enjoy it.
To call this a spy thriller is to diminish its quality.it is of course a spy thriller and a fascinating detective story but it is much more than that.I believe that it is Harris best and one of the few outstanding dramatic action historical novels of all times
It is the narrative of the Grand Drama,political,military and human that took place in France between the late 19th and the early 20th Centuries,the Dreyfus affair.
All main characters of the novel are real historical persons.The wrongly accused as a German spy Major Dreyfus a French Officer and an Alsatian Jew, a model of stoicism,a man of professional and family values,portrayed superbly by the Author as History delivered him to posterity,a man of schoolmasterish appearance and enormous inner strength who suffered his own Calvary because of the prejudice that haunts his Race, before his exoneration .
The principal character, Colonel Picquart,an Alsatian himself narrates the story in the first person.He is the new Head of the Statistical Section which is the front for the French Army's counterespionage team.He knew the Dreyfus affair from the beginning but did not initially challenged it.He is the subject of a superbly drawn psychological and physical portrait by the Author,he is so vividly described by Harris as he really was that one feels that knows him.
Picquart ,while no Saint and with the limitations of his profession and his social class,is a man of integrity,intelligence and dogged determination as well as a crafty bureaucratic fighter that knows the system well.
The rest of the characters are extremely well described and formed and a number of different historical persons that make Cameo appearances build an excellent understanding for the Reader about the French Society of those times with its deep political divisions and prejudices and the French Army's Trauma from its defeat by the Germans 25 years before.
The story is essentially the struggle for the truth to come out fighting against the Establishment and an Administration that will go a long way to cover its crime of condemning an innocent man for reasons of politics and prejudices
The Author,a master of elegant descriptive prose,with a magnificent economy of style revives the era ,it's characters and the surrounding atmosphere,respecting the historical truth but embellishing it with rich talented descriptions of situations,actors,ideas and feelings so that the part of the plot that is already known is only the skeleton of the harmoniously fleshed out story.
The story can be read as a thriller or as a novel of high literary value because it is both.I did not have a single dull moment reading it.
It is strongly recommended for both the casual and the intellectual reader,there is intrigue,action, thrills and quality to satisfy all.
DVK
If you pick this book up and think you're going to put it down again, think again. A combination of spy, detective and court room genres, that actually concerns an actual historical event. It addresses the moral complexities of obeying orders, going along to benefit one's career versus taking the moral right course. In this respect the subjects explored here are timeless. What is courage even in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic and societal resistance? This novel explores these timeless, historical themes with actual historical characters that are expertly and believably fleshed out. If you've heard of the Dreyfus affair but are not sure what it was or think it was some dusty historical anomaly that has no relevance to today, think again. It is supremely relevant to today's politics. This book would make an excellent film, but read it, you won't want it to end.