Novelist Laurent Binet uses special access to French president to portray him as an affable and determined 'war machine'
Sealed with a hotly debated kiss: French president Francois Hollande with partner Valerie Trierweiler on election night. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images
François Hollande is an affable but constantly self-controlled "war machine" who was determined to win the French presidency, regularly called Nicolas Sarkozy an injurious bastard in private and displayed a child-like pride at his election victory, according to a novelist's much-awaited account of the campaign.
Laurent Binet, one of France's most praised new young novelists, was given special access to the new Socialist president to produce a literary political portrait – a new publishing genre in France after Sarkozy opened his doors to the playwright Yasmina Reza during the 2007 presidential race.
Reza's bestseller about Sarkozy depicted a cigar-smoking "unexpectedly fragile" egotist and 4am riser who hated being alone, was obsessed by polls and ratings, and ashamed of his pet chihuahua named Big. The first extracts of Binet's book published in Le Nouvel Observateur magazine this week pointed to a character less erratic than Sarkozy, but the writer conceded in an interview that beneath the simple exterior there was no doubt an element of "megalomania" somewhere. Binet's book, Rien Ne Se Passé Comme Prevu (Nothing Happens as Predicted), will be released next week, tipped as the main event in France's autumn publishing season.
Like Reza's book, Binet's has prompted questions over how far the novelist fell under his subject's spell. He told Le Nouvel Observateur: "Hollande seduced me, that's his job." He had denied reports that his publishers wanted him to "spice up" the book with more details about Hollande's relationship with his partner Valerie Trierweiler. She had been an intermediary and supporter of the project, having interviewed Binet about his 2010 award-winning first novel, HHhH, which tells the story of Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich.
In one extract of the new book Hollande is watching a TV politics show on which Sarkozy rages about a senior socialist comparing him to financial fraudster Bernie Madoff, complaining that Madoff got "184 years in prison". Hollande mutters: "But you will too."
In a passage that perhaps reveals more about Trierweiler than Hollande, the president's partner puts a "strange question" to each person in the small group travelling by plane to Paris with Hollande after his election win. She asks: "At this moment of accomplishment, which person does it feel like a personal revenge against?" Binet writes: "One said a past girlfriend, another an ex-colleague. Hollande said simply 'Sarkozy'."
On the same flight, Binet asks Hollande about a Guardian article based on a lunch with foreign correspondents just before his London campaign visit, which quoted Hollande saying there weren't many communists left in France and explaining how the French left had liberalised the economy in the mid-1980s and should not be feared. After the article, Sarkozy attacked Hollande in a speech, calling him "Thatcher in England and Mitterrand in France". Hollande said: "The mistake was talking to an English newspaper. And going to London. That trip was pointless. Everyone focuses on the international [arena], but in a French presidential election, that's never where things are played out."
In the book Malek Boutih, now a Socialist MP, describes Hollande as a mystery, someone who "doesn't exist" and has "completely depersonalised" himself to fit office. "Sarkozy thought he could keep his personality and be president, he got it all wrong," he said.
Laurent Binet, one of France's most praised new young novelists, was given special access to the new Socialist president to produce a literary political portrait – a new publishing genre in France after Sarkozy opened his doors to the playwright Yasmina Reza during the 2007 presidential race.
Reza's bestseller about Sarkozy depicted a cigar-smoking "unexpectedly fragile" egotist and 4am riser who hated being alone, was obsessed by polls and ratings, and ashamed of his pet chihuahua named Big. The first extracts of Binet's book published in Le Nouvel Observateur magazine this week pointed to a character less erratic than Sarkozy, but the writer conceded in an interview that beneath the simple exterior there was no doubt an element of "megalomania" somewhere. Binet's book, Rien Ne Se Passé Comme Prevu (Nothing Happens as Predicted), will be released next week, tipped as the main event in France's autumn publishing season.
Like Reza's book, Binet's has prompted questions over how far the novelist fell under his subject's spell. He told Le Nouvel Observateur: "Hollande seduced me, that's his job." He had denied reports that his publishers wanted him to "spice up" the book with more details about Hollande's relationship with his partner Valerie Trierweiler. She had been an intermediary and supporter of the project, having interviewed Binet about his 2010 award-winning first novel, HHhH, which tells the story of Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich.
In one extract of the new book Hollande is watching a TV politics show on which Sarkozy rages about a senior socialist comparing him to financial fraudster Bernie Madoff, complaining that Madoff got "184 years in prison". Hollande mutters: "But you will too."
In a passage that perhaps reveals more about Trierweiler than Hollande, the president's partner puts a "strange question" to each person in the small group travelling by plane to Paris with Hollande after his election win. She asks: "At this moment of accomplishment, which person does it feel like a personal revenge against?" Binet writes: "One said a past girlfriend, another an ex-colleague. Hollande said simply 'Sarkozy'."
On the same flight, Binet asks Hollande about a Guardian article based on a lunch with foreign correspondents just before his London campaign visit, which quoted Hollande saying there weren't many communists left in France and explaining how the French left had liberalised the economy in the mid-1980s and should not be feared. After the article, Sarkozy attacked Hollande in a speech, calling him "Thatcher in England and Mitterrand in France". Hollande said: "The mistake was talking to an English newspaper. And going to London. That trip was pointless. Everyone focuses on the international [arena], but in a French presidential election, that's never where things are played out."
In the book Malek Boutih, now a Socialist MP, describes Hollande as a mystery, someone who "doesn't exist" and has "completely depersonalised" himself to fit office. "Sarkozy thought he could keep his personality and be president, he got it all wrong," he said.
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