Imagine Zadie Smith shadowing Gordon Brown for a year and writing a book about what she witnessed. No wonder Yasmina Reza's account of Nicolas Sarkozy is the publishing event of the year in France. Out tomorrow, L'Aube le Soir ou la Nuit is already the bestseller on Amazon.fr and will probably outsell even La Femme Fatale, a damning portrait of Ségolène Royal by two Le Monde journalists.
Reza, a well-known playwright, enjoyed the kind of access to the French president that journalists could only dream about. Indeed, Sarkozy called her after the election to say how much he had enjoyed her company. She watched him drafting speeches and in meetings with senior party members. What emerged was an egotistical character with absolute faith in his own judgment, but with a childlike enthusiasm and "unexpected fragility" that, according to the first reviews of the book, Reza found captivating.
The news weekly Le Nouvel Observateur publishes extracts today.
"He picked up a copy of Le Figaro that was on my knees, obviously interested in an article. Ahmadinejad's electoral setback was on the front, and various other stories, one of them about him. After a few seconds, he said: 'That Rolex is gorgeous.'"
Sometimes a vanity approaching egomania is on display: "If I didn't exist, you'd have to invent me," Sarkozy said at one point. A few days before he became president, he promised himself "a palace in Paris, a chateau at Rambouillet, a castle at Brégançon. C'est la vie." He is scathing about Royal's failings ("Is she helping me? Not necessarily. Being useless seems to be no handicap in France.") and admits his victory in the first round depended on picking up support from the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen: "If Le Pen's voters abandon us, we're sunk."
"I don't like being dependent and I don't like it when anyone depends on me," Sarkozy observes.
Tony Blair is mentioned more than once: "He talked about Blair and Prodi warmly. I said, it's funny that you're friends with these leftwing guys. "Because they're not on the left!" he exclaimed. "It's only in France where people are still leftwing!"
More surprising, perhaps, is Sarkozy's mood after finally securing the presidency he craved all his life. "I'm serene," he tells Reza, "deeply contented. But I'm not joyful."
