<b>Restored to print for the first time in more than forty years, <i>The President</i> was hailed by the <i>New York Times</i> as a &ldquo;tour de force&rdquo;</b><br><br>At 82, the former premier lives in alert and suspicious retirement&mdash;self exile&mdash;on the Normandy coast, writing his anxiously anticipated memoirs and receiving visits from statesman and biographers. In his library is the self-condemning, handwritten confession of the premier&rsquo;s former attaché, Chalamont, hidden between the pages of a sumptuously produced work of privately printed pornography&mdash;a confession that the premier himself had dictated and forced Chalamont to sign. Now the long-thwarted Chalamont has been summoned to form a new coalition in the wake of the government&rsquo;s collapse. The premier alone possesses the secret of Chalamont&rsquo;s guilt, of his true character&mdash;and has publicly vowed: &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll never be Premier as long as I&rsquo;m alive... Nor when I&rsquo;m dead, either.&rdquo; Inspired by French Premier Georges Clemenceau, <i>The President</i> is a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a probing account of the decline of power.