Paper Conspiracies

One of the most sensational incidents in the history of France, the Dreyfus Affair was a landmark federal case involving treason and antisemitism. A controversial documentary about the trial by pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès caused riots when it was shown in 1899, and was banned from any screening in France for the next three quarters of a century.

Who engineered Dreyfus’s conviction? Was the man who played him in the film actually murdered by a mob of enraged moviegoers? And why is Jack Kews, a shadowy 20th-century Zola in New York City, so determined to find out?

A web of intrigue, menace and betrayal reaches through space and time, as the search for keys to a historic trap hones in on a cache of zealously guarded forgeries and tins of crumbling film stock.

Susan Daitch is the author of four novels –The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir, Paper Conspiracies, L. C. (Lannan Foundation Selection and NEA Heritage Award), The Colorist – and a collection of short stories, Storytown. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction and The Brooklyn Rail. Her work was featured in The Review of Contemporary Fiction along with William Vollman and David Foster Wallace. She taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently teaches at Hunter College.