Sarkozy Authors 216-Page Prison Memoir on Brief Incarceration

A teaser quote from Sarkozy’s upcoming book states: “In prison, there is nothing to see, and nothing to do,” raising the question of what will fill 216 pages. He observes that silence is absent in La Santé prison, with noise being constant. Did prison break Sarkozy? Clearly not; he notes that “like [in] the desert, inner life strengthens in prison.”

At 70, Sarkozy was jailed after being convicted of using intermediaries to seek funding from Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya for his 2007 presidential campaign. He became the first former French leader to be imprisoned since Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain. He was released on November 10 after an appeals court approved his release request.

During his time in prison, Sarkozy was kept separate from the general population, with two bodyguards in a neighboring cell for his protection. News of the book follows POLITICO’s Declassified humor column, which speculated on the contents of a potential Sarkozy prison memoir.