François Hollande publishes on 3 September. The book is called *Unir. Nouveau monde, nouvelle gauche*, it runs to a set of proposals, and the people around him describe it as an answer to three questions: how to prepare the country's future around its young people, how to protect the French at home and abroad, and how to unite the republic against the forces dividing it. There is a section on what a new left ought to be.
Eight months out from the presidential election, none of that is read in France as a publishing schedule. The former president, now the deputy for Corrèze, has not stopped seeing himself as the fallback on the left — the name available if Raphaël Glucksmann slips in the polling, or if the Socialist primary produces a candidate who cannot hold the ground.
He turned 72 last week. Friends marked it by plastering the neighbourhood with posters.
Why it is on the board
It was on 20 Minutes' most-read list in France. What the paper is reporting is not the book's contents, which are not out, but the act of scheduling it — a politician's autumn book being a recognised French instrument for keeping a candidacy alive without declaring one.
확인: 20 Minutes · AFP