A quote from the actual book was released as a teaser. It begins: “In prison, there is nothing to see, and nothing to do,” which does rather beg the question — what are you going to write 216 pages about?
He adds that “silence … does not exist at La Santé [prison in Paris]” but that noise “is alas constant.”
Did prison break Sarkozy?
Of course not, as he writes, “like [in] the desert, inner life strengthens in prison.”
Sarkozy, 70, was imprisoned after being found guilty of allowing “close collaborator” and “unofficial intermediaries” to try to obtain funding from Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya for his 2007 presidential run. That made him the first former French head of state to end up behind bars since Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain.
He was allowed to walk out of prison on Nov. 10 after an appeals court approved his request for release.
During his incarceration, Sarkozy was separated from the general prison population, and two bodyguards occupied a neighboring cell to ensure his safety.
News of the book comes less than a month after POLITICO’s Declassified humor column speculated as to what a Sarkozy prison memoir would look like.