The boy president

Imagine Zadie Smith shadowing Gordon Brown for a year and writing a book about what she witnessed. No wonder Yasmina Reza's account of Nicolas Sarkozy is the publishing event of the year in France. Out tomorrow, L'Aube le Soir ou la Nuit is already the bestseller on Amazon.fr and will probably outsell even La Femme Fatale, a damning portrait of Ségolène Royal by two Le Monde journalists.

Reza, a well-known playwright, enjoyed the kind of access to the French president that journalists could only dream about. Indeed, Sarkozy called her after the election to say how much he had enjoyed her company. She watched him drafting speeches and in meetings with senior party members. What emerged was an egotistical character with absolute faith in his own judgment, but with a childlike enthusiasm and "unexpected fragility" that, according to the first reviews of the book, Reza found captivating.