Ma part de vérité

Ma part de vérité grew out of a dialogue with Alain Duhamel, then a young political journalist who edited the “En toute liberté” series at Fayard, in which he had published, in 1968, a book of interviews with Raymond Aron, La Révolution introuvable, on the events of May 1968. A few months later, Duhamel proposed that Mitterrand contribute a book to the same series. Its composition took longer than expected, not least because Mitterrand kept revising the transcripts of the fifty or so conversations between the two men, correcting proofs even at the printer’s. Ma part de vérité did not appear until early summer 1969, a year after the disastrous legislative elections.

In the book, Mitterrand retraces his political career and justifies his choices since 1965 — the year of the first direct presidential election of the Fifth Republic — while clarifying his conception of the Left and of socialism. Its belated publication, coming just after the presidential election of June 1–15, 1969 (triggered by de Gaulle’s resignation, and in which the Left was eliminated in the first round), allowed Mitterrand to position himself as a credible builder of a shattered Left. In June 1971, at the Épinay congress, Mitterrand joined the Socialist Party, refounded it, and led it to power in May 1981.

The recipient’s husband commanded the volunteer fire brigade of Château-Chinon, the small town in the Nièvre where Mitterrand served as mayor from 1959 to 1981.

Crease to the cover.