Book description
>In October 1894, the torn fragments of an unsigned memo containing
military secrets were retrieved by a cleaning lady from the waste paper
basket of Colonel Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen of the German embassy in
Paris. When French intelligence discovered they harboured a spy in their
midst, Captain Dreyfus, on slender evidence, was charged with selling
military secrets to the Germans, found guilty of treason by unanimous
verdict and sentenced to life imprisonment on the notorious Devil's Island.
The fight to free the wrongfully convicted Dreyfus - over twelve long
years, through many trials - is a story rife with heroes and villains,
courage and cowardice, dissimulation and deceit. One of the most
infamous miscarriages of justice in history, the Dreyfus affair divided
France, stunned the world and unleashed violent hatreds and anti-Semitic
passions which offered a foretaste of what was to play out in the long,
bloody twentieth century to come.
Today, amid charged debates over national and religious identity across
the globe, its lessons throw into sharp relief the conflicts of the
present. In the hands of historian, biographer and prize-winning
novelist Piers Paul Read, this masterful epic of the struggle between a
minority seeking justice and a military establishment determined to save
face comes dramatically alive for a new generation.> >In October
1894, the torn fragments of an unsigned memo containing military secrets
were retrieved by a cleaning lady from the waste paper basket of Colonel
Maximilien von Schwartzkoppen of the German embassy in Paris. When
French intelligence discovered they harboured a spy in their midst,
Captain Dreyfus, on slender evidence, was charged with selling military
secrets to the Germans, found guilty of treason by unanimous verdict and
sentenced to life imprisonment on the notorious Devil's Island.
The fight to free the wrongfully convicted Dreyfus - over twelve long
years, through many trials - is a story rife with heroes and villains,
courage and cowardice, dissimulation and deceit. One of the most
infamous miscarriages of justice in history, the Dreyfus affair divided
France, stunned the world and unleashed violent hatreds and anti-Semitic
passions which offered a foretaste of what was to play out in the long,
bloody twentieth century to come.
Today, amid charged debates over national and religious identity across
the globe, its lessons throw into sharp relief the conflicts of the
present. In the hands of historian, biographer and prize-winning
novelist Piers Paul Read, this masterful epic of the struggle between a
minority seeking justice and a military establishment determined to save
face comes dramatically alive for a new generation.>
