After two children’s books and an essay, Minister Jean-François Roberge took up his pen and launched Collisions, his first adventure novel for adults, the fruit of work that would have taken him several years.
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“I had the idea in 2015, that’s eight years ago. Then I wrote it in about five years. So I think I took the time to do things,” explained the Minister of the French Language on Tuesday in the corridors of parliament.
According to his publishing house, Mr. Roberge’s novel is a story that “is in line with the great classics”, like the works of Alexandre Dumas, the author of Three musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo.
Collisions tells the story of a 20-year-old young man who finds himself “under a pirate flag far away in the West Indies where a series of extraordinary events will make him a freedom-loving man rising up against the colonialist dictates of his time,” it is specified in the summary of the work.
The workload of a minister is particularly heavy, and writing a book does not happen overnight. For these reasons, the French minister Bruno Le Maire, also a writer in his spare time, attracted much criticism after the publication of his latest novel, American escapeearlier this year.
He was notably criticized for taking too much time for his literary activities, while France was facing a social crisis.
Minister Roberge assures that he has no difficulty reconciling his role as minister and his writing, which he defines as a hobby like any other.
“There are MPs, ministers who cycle, others who read, others who do crosswords. Me, to relax, I write,” he argued.
Moreover, the elected representatives of the opposition have no reproach to address to him because of his literary activity. “I don’t want to blame him. We’ll see if the novel is good,” said Quebec Solidaire MP Sol Zanetti on Tuesday morning. Mr. Zanetti believes that Mr. Roberge must be judged by his results as minister, “not by his schedule”.
“People must be judged on the quality of what they deliver in their role (…). We must not fall into ultra-partisanship,” added PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, in a separate press briefing.
Mr. St-Pierre-Plamondon believes that if writing is what allows Mr. Roberge to “air his mind,” it is his business, even if he agrees that he himself would not have time to work on writing a book.