An eagerly awaited new book tracing a year in the life of Nicolas Sarkozy shows the French president as a never-resting, power-hungry statesman with a weakness for sweets and luxury watches.
Critics are divided over whether Yasmina Reza's "L'Aube le soir ou la nuit" ("Dawn in the evening or at night") on Sarkozy's presidential campaign should be labelled a political memoir, a poetic portrait or just a flattering tribute.
Reza, whose play "Art" has been performed in dozens of countries, has compiled a collection of amusing and mostly harmless anecdotes gathered on the campaign trail in French villages and factories and during meetings with heads of state.
"I support some of his ideas. Others, I profoundly disagree with," Reza told the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur in an interview. "On the other hand, the politician has left me impressed. I challenge anyone who has met him not to be."
The book, which immediately topped an Amazon best-seller list when it came out on Friday, reveals no political secrets. Neither does it satisfy those readers who had hoped for juicy details on Sarkozy's widely debated relationship with his wife Cecilia, whose role has puzzled many French since she helped to end a diplomatic stand-off with Libya last month.
In one anecdote, Reza describes Sarkozy taking a newspaper off her that contained articles on Iran and on himself. "At the bottom of the page, to the right, an ad. After looking at it for several seconds, he says: 'It's beautiful, that Rolex'," Reza writes.
The book, which frequently relates Sarkozy's appetite for sweets, also says he was less than complimentary about a number of diplomats during a breakfast meeting with foreign experts. He called the former ambassador to Russia an "idiot" and the one in Lebanon a "moron".