HIBAPRESS – Abdellatif Baraka
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on his "X" platform page the release of his new book "Prisoner's Diaries," a work in which he records his impressions during the short period he spent inside La Santé prison.
The book, which will be published by Fayard in 216 pages, promises the reader a journey into the world of prison, even if the journey is more limited by time than its title suggests. In global tradition, prison diaries are usually written after many years of isolation and struggle, as Nelson Mandela and others did, but Sarkozy offers an intense and compressed approach to an experience that did not exceed a few weeks. What was leaked from the book's pages, he talks about the silence that is not silent, and about the noise that accompanies the prisoner like his shadow, and about the moments of forced contemplation imposed by the four walls. Although the experience is short, the book seems to be a clear attempt to capture its symbolic dimension, and perhaps to reshape the image of the man after his judicial ordeal, and between the lines of contemplation, another dimension emerges, which is the use of literature as a space for self-defense, not as a record of suffering over a long time. In the end, the judgment remains for the readers, will "Prisoner's Diaries" be seen as a work that carries the weight of the experience, or as a passing chapter in the life of a president who is not accustomed to staying behind closed doors?
