FRANCE: As sand and palm trees are scattered along the banks of the Seine this week to create Paris's annual urban beach, most holidaymakers will be stocking up on the paperback blockbusters dominating the French bestseller lists.
But Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious interior minister and presidential hopeful, believes he can buck the trend today by publishing his own 300-page magnum opus, in which he promises to explain his uneasy relationship with president Jacques Chirac and pour his heart out over his renewed love for his wife and senior adviser, Cecilia, who is very publicly back in his arms after she left him for New York and the company of an American events manager.
Témoignage (testimony) is Mr Sarkozy's second book and was dashed off in four months, with a second instalment planned for the new year. He says it is his most personal tome, and was "difficult, painful and sometimes heartbreaking" to write, as he talks about love, running for president, and being an admirer of Charles de Gaulle as a teenager.
The head of the ruling centre right UMP party has also set up a website offering sneak previews of a few pages to anyone who agrees to join his mailing list, and has autographed the first 500 copies to be sold online.
Last night, he was preparing to appear on the most popular evening news bulletin before starting a summer tour of book signings, as his party also takes a political roadshow around the coast of France to garner support. He had initially planned to publish last week and steal the limelight from what was probably Mr Chirac's last Bastille Day speech, but the two rivals came to an agreement and it was postponed.
Mr Sarkozy is keen to prove his talents as a wordsmith against the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who has published poetry and a biography of Napoleon.
"I wrote it all myself," Mr Sarkozy has assured journalists. But he also uses his own "personal story" of politics and ambition to persuade voters that he is very different from the rest of France's elitist ruling class.
Politics wasn't a "family tradition", he writes, saying he didn't have connections or a family "fortune" and always stood out for his foreign-sounding name.
He tells how his father left Hungary for France before the Iron Curtain closed, and his mother's father was a Jew from the Greek city of Salonica.
"But we loved France. The idea of criticising France would never have crossed our minds," he adds, in a nod towards France's immigrants today, who he has suggested should love France or leave.