Politicians in France tend to write a lot of books. Essays are expected of any serious presidential aspirant. Memoirs are a must for any politician worth their salt. And in a country where the ruling class still likes to profess a regard for high culture, officials occasionally indulge in more creative texts: Former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire released two historical novels while in office, and former Gender Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa has published multiple self-help books about sex under a pseudonym. Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin once wrote a post-apocalyptic novel from the perspective of a tree.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder and leader of left-populist party La France Insoumise (LFI), is no stranger to the world of publishing. He has written more than 20 books since he emerged as a national political figure in the early 1990s, running the gamut from critical essays about the Socialist Party’s desertion of its left-wing roots and a polemic about Germany’s stranglehold on the European Union to various manifestos and interviews timed for election seasons.

Politicians in France tend to write a lot of books. Essays are expected of any serious presidential aspirant. Memoirs are a must for any politician worth their salt. And in a country where the ruling class still likes to profess a regard for high culture, officials occasionally indulge in more creative texts: Former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire released two historical novels while in office, and former Gender Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa has published multiple self-help books about sex under a pseudonym. Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin once wrote a post-apocalyptic novel from the perspective of a tree.

Now, the People!: Revolution in the 21st Century, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, trans. David Broder, Verso, 320 pp., $29.95, April 2025

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder and leader of left-populist party La France Insoumise (LFI), is no stranger to the world of publishing. He has written more than 20 books since he emerged as a national political figure in the early 1990s, running the gamut from critical essays about the Socialist Party’s desertion of its left-wing roots and a polemic about Germany’s stranglehold on the European Union to various manifestos and interviews timed for election seasons.

Yet the three-time presidential candidate’s 2023 book, Faites Mieux! Vers la revolution citoyenne, appears to be the first translated into English, released this month as Now, the People!: Revolution in the 21st Century.

In France, the book received a muted response. Reviewers treated it as a standard addition to the crowded genre of nonfiction from politicians, including those writing for left-wing outlets largely sympathetic to the author. This makes it all the more surprising that Mélenchon’s Anglophone publisher chose to present Now, the People! as a substantial theoretical text, heralding an “ambitious analytical framework” for understanding global politics.

There should be no doubt: By these metrics, the book does not live up the billing. But it does offer some insight into the 73-year-old Mélenchon’s views—and by extension, the conundrums of the stagnant French left.

Mélenchon, then-minister of professional training, near Paris in April 2000.Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images

Comparisons with left-wing U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders can be tempting, but Mélenchon spent the first half of his career firmly within the political mainstream. He worked his way up through a Socialist Party that held the French presidency throughout the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Mélenchon only reinvented himself as an anti-establishment firebrand later in his career, identifying a void left by his party’s embrace of economic liberalism. If Sanders’ strength flows from his status as the consummate outsider—a man preaching the same basic message for decades—Mélenchon’s comes from his capacity for reinvention: for understanding his country’s shifting political sands and seizing the opportunities before him.

The first major turning point came in 2005. Breaking with Socialist Party leadership, Mélenchon campaigned for a “no” vote in France’s referendum on a new EU constitution, deriding the failed proposal as a neoliberal Trojan horse. Three years later, he launched the Left Party, and in 2012 he ran for president as its candidate, winning a respectable 11 percent of the first-round vote.

It wasn’t until 2017 that Mélenchon emerged as the dominant figure on the French left. That year, Socialist President François Hollande’s former economics minister, Emmanuel Macron, broke with his party and campaigned for president on a pro-business, socially liberal platform. He unexpectedly surged into the run-off round and easily defeated Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally. Mélenchon reaped the rewards of Hollande’s unpopular presidency in a different way: He won over millions of people with an ambitious platform calling for wealth redistribution and reinvestment in public services. He cast his new movement, LFI, as a continuation of the country’s revolutionary republican........

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