A young army officer is found guilty of spying and imprisoned on a desert island. An intelligence agent finds evidence that the prisoner is innocent and begins investigating. Soon he is disowned by his superiors and exiled. His life is in danger, but he is determined to expose the truth.
Sounds familiar? It is, of course, l'affaire Dreyfus, thrillingly retold in the new book An Officer and A Spy, by Robert Harris. The writer was also the author of The Ghost, which Roman Polanski made into a movie. And it was Polanski who encouraged Harris to turn the Dreyfus affair into a thriller - no doubt identifying with tales of accusation and exile.
One notorious aspect of the affair was the anti-semitism that made Dreyfus a convenient culprit. As a Jew, he was felt to be "foreign" enough to be a spy. In fact he had done nothing, apart from working in the department the secrets were stolen from. Ancient history? Not quite. Last week the British right-leaning newspaper the Daily Mail published an insulting portrait of Labour leader Ed Miliband's father, Ralph, a Jewish refugee who fled Belgium to escape the Nazis. The article described him as "The man who hated Britain", ostensibly because he was a Marxist - but actually because he was "foreign". A lot has changed since Dreyfus was accused in 1894, but xenophobia is still with us. Mr Harris shows us where it can lead.
