How Nicolas Sarkozy Survived Twenty Days Behind Bars

Sarkozy has been assigned prisoner number 320535. “Four days earlier, I was Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of the Republic, received by President Emmanuel Macron himself at the Elysee Palace,” he writes. “Could a more striking contrast and a more absurd situation ever be imagined?” (And you thought Jean Valjean was having an identity crisis.) Sarkozy tries valiantly not to indulge in self-pity—children with cancer have it worse, he muses—but it is nevertheless clear that Cell No. 11 is not to his liking. Besides the crappy desk and chair, the shower is the “most uncomfortable” he's ever experienced, the mattress is the hardest he's ever felt, and the mirror hangs at half height so he has to “double over to straighten his hair or trim his beard.” For security reasons, he is isolated in his cell, with two bodyguards standing nearby.

Sarkozy, a longtime runner and teetotaler, relies on a daily routine to maintain his physical and mental balance. He refuses to eat prison food, subsisting on yogurt, cereal bars, mineral water, apple juice and “a few sweets” that he is allowed to keep in the mini-fridge. (“Unwilling and unable to cook,” he ignores the presence of a stove, although the former chief of staff was kind enough to write down instructions for boiling an egg.) He does, however, have a TV in his room and is allowed daily use of the treadmill; the room is “clean and quite bright”. If it weren't for the bars and the peephole, he writes, he might have thought he was in a “cheap hotel.”

In fact, the time has come that weighs on the spirit of the prisoner. “I dreaded my first Sunday,” he writes. The sand running through his hourglass is the lost moments with his wife, model and singer Carla Bruni, and four children. His third grandchild was born while he was in lockdown. Sarkozy writes that in almost eighteen years of marriage, he and Bruni were never separated for more than a few days, and their record remains unbroken at the time of his conclusion. (Sarkozy claims that he insisted on being treated like any other prisoner, but Mediapartenemy site, recently reported that the French Minister of Justice intervened and granted Bruni special visiting privileges.) While Sarkozy is away, a huge, mysterious bouquet of flowers is delivered to the couple's home daily. The card invariably says “Edmond Dantes,” the name of the dashing, unjustly imprisoned hero of “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I was really hoping that our narrator was going to declare himself the culprit behind this extravagant, sort of whimsical, romantic gesture. Unfortunately, the sender turned out to be one of his friends, hoping to boost morale.

Sarkozy claims to be a gentle man, an “incurably sentimental” man with a penchant for forgiveness, but his current circumstances have forced him to re-evaluate some things. I'm not sure where he found the time to read Alexandre Dumas's masterpiece – along with a biography of Jesus, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Letter to a Hostage and a bit of Sartre – while simultaneously writing a book in twenty days, but the experience seems to have had an invigorating effect. Dumas's book, Sarkozy explains, “carries a double message. Revival, of course, but also revenge.” Edmond Dantes does not forget those who crossed his path, but rather “finds each of his accusers and punishes them with the punishment they deserve.” (We hope this works better for Sarkozy than it did for the Count.) Let this be a warning: if you're a French judge and receive an invitation to a dinner party with mysterious liquids and exotic fish, it's best to decline.

The Prisoner's Journal is currently the #1 bestseller on Amazon France, ahead of the forty-first volume of the Asterix comic book series. Hundreds of enthusiastic supporters turned out for the signing in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris, Sarkozy's domain. However, from a purely literary point of view, the book is at best average opus. Much of the text reads like a short term paper, replete with extraneous details and repetitions that add to the word count. We learn, for example, not once but twice that prison guards, “many of whom originate from French overseas territories,” always address him “with the title of president.”