A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Paris (26 cents)

Several years ago, Arthur Phillips published a novel called: "Prague: a Novel". I was told to read it if I wanted to read a novel about Budapest. (I have not read it. Perhaps, one day)

I did read a book by Erik Zencey called "Panama", which is primarily set in, and deals with, Paris. I really enjoyed the book.

Zencey, according to the cover, is a history professor at Goddard College. This book is as much a history book, as it is an historical novel. ('a' history book; 'an' historical novel?).

The historical context is the failure of the French concessionaire to finish building the Panama Canal, due in large part to economic and political chicanery, and uncovering of a scandal which threatened to bring down the French government. While this was going on, the president of the United States sent John Hay, a future secretary of state, to Paris, to try to acquire the concession from the French. The year was 1892.

Henry Adams (Washingtonians note: Hay-Adams), the grandson of John Quincy, a rather reclusive essayist and historian, is traveling in France, still recovering from the suicide death of his wife, Clover.

Here is where fiction comes in: Adams meets an attractive cultured young woman, an American studying art in Paris, who is soon murdered. Or is she? And, it turns out, her murder (if it ocurred) is involved with a mysterious piece of paper which identified which members of Parliament have been bribed by officials of the canal company.

Adams, who believes that his friend still lives, is determined to find her, meeting real French politicians and law enforcement officials, as well as a number of fictional characters.

All turns out well (except for those unfortunate enough to be the victims of violent crime during the course of the novel), and the reader is rewarded with a compelling history lesson and an adroit mystery, all at the same time.

Of course, as we know, Adams returned to America alone, and the Americans finally did get the canal concession, although not until 1905.

And then, there was Dreyfus, a character not in the book, a Jewish officer, who was accused of being a spy within the French military, two years after the events in the book took place. Dreyfus was innocent, of course, and his trials brought out a virulent form of anti-semitism in France that led, among other things, to Theodor Herzl's development of Zionism (for better or worse). Several of the leading miscreants during the canal scandal, including Jacques (formerly Jacob) Reinach and Cornelius Herz, were Jewish (Reinach escaped punishment through suicide; Herz ran to England), and they were accused by right wing journalist Edmund Drumont of being part of a vast anti-French conspiracy. It was the same Drumont, who became perhaps the biggest anti-Dreyfus media figure a few years later. It does not take a big leap to realize that the publicity surrounding the canal problems helped set the stage for the reaction to Dreyfus and all that followed.