Nicolas Sarkozy to publish book about his 20 days in prison

Nicolas Sarkozy will publish a book next month called A Prisoner’s Diary detailing his 20 days in jail.

The book was announced 11 days after the former French president was released from prison while he appeals against his conviction for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“In prison there is nothing to see, and nothing to do,” he writes in an extract, which suggests the account will be more his musings from his solitary confinement cell than a broader observation of the overcrowded and crisis-hit French prison system.

“I forget silence, which doesn’t exist in La Santé [prison], where there is a lot to hear. The noise is alas constant. But, just like the desert, inner life is fortified in prison.”

At his release request hearing, Sarkozy had appeared by video link from a room in prison, describing his time inside as gruelling.

He had told the court: “I want to pay tribute to all the prison staff, who are exceptionally humane, and who have made this nightmare bearable – because it is a nightmare.

“I never imagined that at 70 years of age, I’d be in prison. It’s an ordeal that has been imposed on me. I confess it’s hard, it’s very hard. It leaves a mark on any prisoner because it’s gruelling.”

Sarkozy, who served as France’s rightwing president between 2007 and 2012, was the first former head of an EU country and the first postwar leader of France to serve time in prison.

Before entering jail he had said he would use his time to write a book.

It is not certain whether he had time to read and critique the three books he took into prison with him: a biography of Jesus and Alexandre Dumas’s novel The Count of Monte Cristo, in which an innocent man is sentenced to jail but escapes to take revenge.

Sarkozy was held in solitary confinement for his own security in a cell of about nine sq metres (100 sq ft) with his own shower and toilet at La Santé prison in Paris. Two bodyguards occupied a neighbouring cell. The French news weekly Le Point reported that he had eaten only yoghurts in prison because he feared any food might have been spat on. He had facilities to cook for himself but refused this, the magazine reported, citing unnamed sources. It is uncertain whether Sarkozy will write about what he ate in prison.

Sarkozy’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain, who visited his client every day while he was in prison, told the release hearing he would be safer out of prison than inside. “He has faced death threats, has heard screaming at night and the urgent intervention in a neighbouring cell when a prisoner self-harmed.”

Sarkozy went to prison on 21 October after a Paris court gave him a five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain campaign funds for his 2007 presidential race.

He denies wrongdoing and has appealed against the verdict, and a fresh trial is scheduled for next spring.