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July The German military attachxE in Paris receives a visit from a seedy-looking man who claims to be a French army officer in desperate need of money offering to sell them military secretsCaptain Alfred Dreyfus was a rising star in the French artillery command Reserved yet intelligent and ambitious Dreyfus had everything a family money and a clear path to a prestigious post on the General Staff However Dreyfus had enemies as a result of his ambition Many of them came from the impoverished Catholic aristocracy and disliked Dreyfus because he was rich bourgeois and above all a JewOn the basis of flimsy evidence Dreyfus was placed under arrest for the crime of high treason Not long afterward he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on the legendary lethal Devils Island The saga of Dreyfuss many trials-he was not exonerated until twelve years after first being arrested-the fight to free him and the intrigues on both sides is a fast-moving mystery story rife with heroes and villains loose women loyal wives bisexual men tricksters and charlatans But this was no mere sideshow The anti-Semitism and deceit on display in the Dreyfus case was an ominous prelude to the Holocaust and the long bloody twentieth century to comeIn an era when religious conflict fierce patriotism and charged debates over national identity pervade the public sphere the scandal of Captain Dreyfus still has much to teach us In the hands of prizewinning novelist biographer and narrative historian Piers Paul Read this real-life morality tale comes alive for a new generation Using his storytelling skills and a nuanced deep knowledge of French history Read rediscovers laffaire Dreyfus as a rich riveting tale.