The Dreyfus Affair: "J`Accuse" and Other Writings - Hardcover

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Written in defense of the court-martialed French soldier Alfred Dreyfus, Zola's essay "J'accuse!" is one of the most famous pieces of rhetorical journalism ever published. This volume collects, for the first time in English, all of Zola's writings on the Dreyfus Affair. Zola's many essays and open letters balance a seething fury at injustice with unrelenting, fiercely logical assaults on Dreyfus's accusers. Balancing these polemics are Zola's poignant, sadly domestic letters home during the year he spent exiled in England after his 1898 libel conviction. Levieux's readable translation lets Zola's forceful, somewhat bombastic tone shine through. The volume is not really a history of the affair, and the notes by Pages (editor of the French edition of Zola's letters) are sparse. (A more comprehensive treatment is available in Jean-Denis Bredin's The Affair, Braziller, 1986.) Instead, the Yale volume is documentation of one man's extraordinary public efforts to clear another's name. Recommended for academic collections.?Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia
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