"The author here has achieved a worthy feat: making an historical incident about which we think we already know more than enough into a legitimate thriller." ~Eric B.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction

A whistle-blower. A witch hunt. A cover-up. Secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, and government corruption. Welcome to 1890s Paris.

Alfred Dreyfus has been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment on a far-off island, and publicly stripped of his rank. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, an ambitious military officer who believes in Dreyfus's guilt as staunchly as any member of the public. But when he is promoted to head of the French counter-espionage agency, Picquart finds evidence that a spy still remains at large in the military—indicating that Dreyfus is innocent. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself. 

Eric B. says: 
"The author here has achieved a worthy feat: making an historical incident about which we think we already know more than enough into a legitimate thriller. After having read the acknowledgements to the book, I’m confident that the events portrayed are as close to the real truth as possible within the framework of a novel. I have maintained for years that more can be learned from honest fiction than from other sources, no matter the sincerity and scrupulousness with which they are produced.

The matter of the degradation, and that is the precise term formally used in this instance, of the French Army Officer Alfred Dreyfuss has been the subject of many books of both fiction and nonfiction (as well as a fairly famous cinema adaptation), by authors from many countries. It may be because of the blatantly self-serving and shamelessly political motives of the prosecution, but also because of the heroic efforts to bring the truth to light.

The protagonist and narrator of this tale is Marie-George Picqualt, a young officer collaterally connected to the original trial of the famous alleged traitor who becomes the most strident and dedicated disciple of proving his innocence and the perfidy of the French Army’s general command in the slipshod investigation prosecution and subsequent covering-up of the infamous incident. The narrative follows Picqualt's discovery that Dreyfus was railroaded and the identity of the actual traitor in a detailed manner that supplies all the specific information the reader needs to understand clearly the truth of the story. One's admiration for the profoundly moral Picqualt and his ceaseless struggle to exonerate the innocent, bring the guilty to justice and with it all refrain from revealing state secrets grows with each page. At great cost to himself and risking the ruination of his life, he pursues every available path.

A genuine thriller, surprising since we know exactly where it's all going, this keeps the reader's attention in a masterful way. Any reader of historical fiction will enjoy this, and maybe some of those who love action-adventure stuff, too."

"Barry’s prose is a comfort to read even when he is recounting some fairly disturbing stuff. I admit to a vigorous prejudice in his favor, but I feel that this bias is justified." ~Eric B.

A stunning new novel from the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture

In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all the extraordinary events that he has seen. A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in World War II, an engineer, a UN observer—has brought him to this point. But the memory that weighs heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan, and their tempestuous, heartbreaking marriage. Mai was once the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman who, after sharing a life with Jack, gradually slipped from his grasp.

Award-winning author Sebastian Barry’s The Temporary Gentleman is the sixth book in his cycle of separate yet interconnected novels that brilliantly reimagine characters from Barry’s own family.

Eric B. says:
"This work encompasses a humanity so profound that it seems to be alive itself. The protagonist, Jack McNulty is a deeply flawed man with a past so varied in experience that reading the book for his history is itself worth the expense of time. Jack is the perpetrator of casual cruelty through dereliction or plain unconsciousness, sometimes nearly simultaneously with acts of deeply moving kindness and expressions of a vast reservoir of love. He is, in other words, a human much like most of us.

Barry’s prose is a comfort to read even when he is recounting some fairly disturbing stuff. I admit to a vigorous prejudice in his favor, but I feel that this bias is justified. His other books dealing with the McNultys and their adventures have been among the finest I have ever read. The reader will likely find that rereading passages simply to experience the beauty of the craftsmanship is common. I recommend any of the author’s books very strongly. See if you don’t agree."