The time of storms

Nicolas Sarkozy

(L’Observatoire, 528 pages, 2020)

***RIGHTS HAVE SOLD IN GERMANY AND SPAIN***

***TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE***

From May 16, 2007 on, I was alone. Of course, I had the vote of the French people, but their collective strength is not expressed in the day-to-day decisions or appointments to be made. I had a team, advisors, friends, but I was alone in making the final decisions. That was the first feeling that overwhelmed me after I walked Jacques Chirac to his car and went back up to the presidential office—now my office—for the next five years. I had wanted it, hoped for it, dreamed about it. Now I was there. The French people had placed their trust in me—am I capable of keeping it? What was I in for? I closed my eyes, and then and there, the gravity and, above all, the loneliness of the job fell on my shoulders. It was more brutal than I had imagined. Suddenly, my past disappeared as if it had never existed. Only the present and the future counted. It was dizzying, and so complete, and yet there was no inner turmoil. I was both calm and perfectly aware that I was on the edge of a precipice.

—Opening of The Time of Storms

An immediate bestseller! The Time of Storms is the first volume of Nicolas Sarkozy’s memoir, recounting the first two years of his term as president of France, written during our recent confinement because of COVID-19. It’s a backstage tour of the international stage, of his relationships with other world leaders: George Bush, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, as well as the internal tensions with French political figures and personalities: Emmanuel Macron, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and François Hollande. Deftly weaving the personal with the political, Sarkozy reveals the extent to which politics is also a study of personality and the most human sides of world leaders, of which he is especially observant and by which he is thoroughly fascinated. 

These first years of his presidency were marked by the 2008 financial crisis, during which his new role required the economic diplomacy that would ultimately translate into the new goals for the international economic forum G20 (Group of Twenty). Recounting these years, Sarkozy draws disconcertingly direct parallels to what we currently face, as the extended confinement has strained economies across the globe, while exemplifying the sort of leadership necessary to traverse a recession. The Time of Storms is an all-too-timely memoir, and one that has already captured an international readership.

Nicolas Sarkozy served as the president of France from May 2007 to May 2012. He is the author of fifteen books, notably Testimony: France in the Twenty-First Century (XO Éditions, 2006) and Passions (L’Observatoire, 2019).