2014年经济学人 法国政治小说 纯属巧合?（在线收听）

French political fiction

What if it were true?

When truth really is stranger than fiction

ONE pleasure of the French summer is the publication of political fiction in media usually busy with the soap opera of real political life. During the holidays, reporters let their imaginations run wild. Improbable alliances, liaisons and betrayals are invented. Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, ran a 17-part fictional series in August entitled “Hollande departs”.L'Opinion, another daily, ran a 14-part series originally called “The kidnapping of Arnaud Montebourg”.

Other countries turn out political drama, from America's “House of Cards” to Denmark's “Borgen”. But the French seem keen on fiction based on real characters. In recent years directors have made films about serving, or recently active, politicians, including “La conquete”, a fictional portrayal of the rise to power of Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president. “Quai d'Orsay” was an entertaining glimpse into theatrics at the foreign office under a fictitious Dominique de Villepin, a former foreign minister.

Television does it too. A French series, “L'Ecole du Pouvoir”, followed five characters who met at the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration in the late 1970s, ahead of the election of a Socialist president, Fran?ois Mitterrand, in 1981. One seemed rather like Fran?ois Hollande, the incumbent; another resembled Ségolène Royal, his classmate, former partner and defeated 2007 presidential candidate.

French publishers also like the stuff, although more often as apocalyptic futurism. Recent titles include “La nuit de la faillite”, a racy thriller by Gaspard Koenig, a former speechwriter for Christine Lagarde when she was finance minister, in which he imagines a New York trader provoking a default on French sovereign debt. Nicolas Baverez, a lawyer and writer, recently published “Lettres béninoises”, a novel set in a dystopian 2040 France.

Why the passion for political fiction? The truth in French politics is often as strange as, or stranger than, such musings. A summer 2013 series in Le Figaro imagined Mr Valls as prime minister; in 2014 it happened. And in “The kidnapping of Arnaud Montebourg”, also penned by Mr Koenig, a group of libertarians snatch the former minister to stop him damaging France. The series was still running when Mr Montebourg was evicted from the government for criticising its economic policy