Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters
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Louis Begley
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Format: PaperPrice: $34.00
From the prize-winning author of Wartime Lies, an anatomy of the infamous prosecution of a Jewish officer attached to the French Army’s General Staff, with profound implications for our own time.
In December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a brilliant French artillery officer and a Jew of Alsatian descent, was court-martialed for selling secrets to the German military attaché in Paris based on perjured testimony and trumped-up evidence. The sentence was military degradation and life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a hellhole off the coast of French Guiana. Five years later, the case was overturned, and eventually Dreyfus was completely exonerated. Meanwhile, the Dreyfus Affair tore France apart, pitting Dreyfusards—committed to restoring freedom and honor to an innocent man convicted of a crime committed by another—against nationalists, anti-Semites, and militarists who preferred having an innocent man rot to exposing the crimes committed by ministers of war and the army’s top brass in order to secure Dreyfus’s conviction.
Was the Dreyfus Affair merely another instance of the rise in France of a virulent form of anti-Semitism? In Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, the acclaimed novelist draws upon his legal expertise to create a riveting account of the famously complex case, and to remind us of the interest each one of us has in the faithful execution of laws as the safeguard of our liberties and honor.
"In thousands of political battles—including those over the Iraq war—Western publics have relived the Dreyfus Affair ever since."—Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs
“I can’t imagine a more unequivocal, socially acute, or legally astute book about the whole hateful Dreyfus Affair than Louis Begley’s “Why Dreyfus Matters.” Add to that the limpidity, the novelist’s eye, the moral passion, and the very considerable narrative gifts that have made Begley’s fiction famous, and you have one of French history’s most tellingly muddled moments, distilled and restored to the drama it in fact was for the country it divided.”—Jane Kramer
“Begley's riveting details and unremitting passion make this book a worthy successor to J'accuse.”--Jewish Book World
“Particularly powerful in drawing lessons for American society after September 11.”--Robert Gildea, New York Review of Books
“A brave new book [and] a pointed warning and reminder of how fragile the standards of civilized conduct prove in moments of national panic.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
"...a brilliant work of historical storytelling, reminding us to what extent the drama is in the detail." — The Jewish Chronicle
“Begley provides a lucid and beautifully written account of L’affair Dreyfus from beginning to end.”
—Steven Lubet, The Green Bag
Publication Date: September 28, 2010
1 b/w illus.
