Sarkozy is assigned prisoner quantity 320535. “4 days earlier, I had been Nicolas Sarkozy, the previous President of the Republic, being acquired by President Emmanuel Macron himself on the Élysée Palace,” he writes. “May one ever have imagined a extra hanging distinction? A extra ludicrous state of affairs?” (And also you thought Jean Valjean was having an id disaster.) Sarkozy tries valiantly to not take pleasure in self-pity—little one most cancers sufferers have it worse, he displays—however it’s nonetheless clear that Cell No. 11 is to not his liking. Along with the shit desk and chair, the bathe is “essentially the most incommodious” he has ever encountered, the mattress the toughest he’s ever felt, and the mirror has been hung at half peak, in order that he’s compelled “to bend over double to repair my hair or trim my beard.” He’s remoted in his cell, for security causes, whereas two bodyguards hold vigil close by.
A longtime jogger and teetotaller, Sarkozy depends on routine to keep up his bodily and psychological equilibrium. He refuses to eat jail meals, subsisting on yogurt, cereal bars, mineral water, apple juice, and “a number of candy treats” that he’s allowed to maintain in a mini fridge. (“Neither wishing nor figuring out methods to cook dinner,” he ignores the presence of a sizzling plate, although a former chief of workers has been form sufficient to write down down directions for boiling an egg.) Nonetheless, he has an in-room tv and is allowed day by day use of a treadmill; the room is “clear and fairly luminous.” If it weren’t for the bars and the peephole, he writes, he might need thought he was in a “low-rent lodge.”
It is time, actually, that weighs on the prisoner’s spirit. “I feared my first Sunday,” he writes. The sands working by his hourglass are missed moments along with his spouse, the mannequin and singer Carla Bruni, and his 4 youngsters. His third grandchild is born whereas he’s locked up. In practically eighteen years of marriage, Sarkozy writes, he and Bruni had by no means been aside for various days, and their document stays unbroken throughout his incarceration. (Sarkozy claims that he insisted on being handled like another inmate, however Mediapart, the enemy web site, not too long ago reported that the French Minister of Justice intervened to present Bruni particular visiting privileges.) Whereas Sarkozy is away, an enormous, mysterious bouquet of flowers is delivered day by day to the couple’s residence. The cardboard invariably reads “Edmond Dantès”—the title of the dashing, unjustly imprisoned hero of “The Depend of Monte Cristo.” I actually hoped that our narrator was about to out himself because the perpetrator of this extravagant, form of freaky romantic gesture. Alas, the sender was certainly one of his mates, hoping to spice up morale.
Sarkozy claims that he’s a softie, “an incurable sentimental” with a forgiving streak, however his present circumstances have compelled him to reëvaluate sure issues. I’m unsure the place he discovered time to learn Alexandre Dumas’s masterpiece—together with the Jesus biography, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “Letter to a Hostage,” and a little bit of Sartre—whereas additionally writing a guide in twenty days, however the expertise appears to have had a bracing impact. Dumas’s guide, Sarkozy explains, “delivers a twin message. Rebirth, in fact, but additionally vengeance.” Edmond Dantès doesn’t overlook those that’ve crossed him however, fairly, “finds every of his accusers and grants them the punishment they deserve.” (Right here’s hoping that works out higher for Sarkozy than it did for the Depend.) Let this be a warning: in case you are a French Justice of the Peace and obtain an invite to a cocktail party that includes mysterious liquids and unique fish, higher to say no.
“Le Journal d’un Prisonnier” is presently the No. 1 best-seller on French Amazon, edging out the forty-first quantity of a collection of “Astérix” comics. Tons of of adoring supporters turned out for a signing within the Sixteenth Arrondissement, Sarkozy’s Paris fief. On purely literary deserves, although, the guide is, at greatest, a mediocris opus. A lot of it reads like a padded-out time period paper, replete with extraneous element and word-count-boosting reps. We study not as soon as however twice, for instance, that the jail guards, “a lot of them originating from France’s abroad territories,” by no means fail to handle him “utilizing the title of President.”
