The President's Hat

by Antoine Laurain, Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Translator), Jane Aitken (Translator), Emily Boyce (Translator)

Overview

This international bestseller is a charming “fable of romance and redemption” about an unsuspecting accountant who happens upon the life-changing power of a rather special hat (Telegraph)

“As entertaining as it is original, this is the story to enjoy like a chocolate with a surprise centre” –Marie France

“Impossible to resist” –L'Express

Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when French President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. Once the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand's black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments' soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It's a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow . . . different.

Has Daniel unwittingly discovered the secret of supreme power? Over the course of the next 2 years the iconic item of headgear plays with the lives of the men and women who wear it, bringing them success that had previously eluded them. As it makes its way from head to head, the wearers find themselves acting with more confidence, decisiveness, authority and panache—just like the original wearer. Some, like Daniel, attribute their new luck to the hat itself, while some are unaware of its magical effects. All, however, find themselves changed by their time spent wearing the president’s hat.

Shot through with a delicious, wicked sense of humour, this delightfully quirky novel is a vivid re-creation of 1980s Paris, and an enchanting exploration of life's possibilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805333432
Publisher:	Steerforth Press
Publication date:	07/01/2025
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Antoine Laurain is the award-winning author of ten novels including The Red Notebook (Indie Next, MIBA bestseller) and The President's Hat (Waterstones Book Club, Indies Introduce). His books have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than 200,000 copies in English. He lives in Paris, France. Beginning in in 2025, more than a dozen of his greatest works will be published in North America by Pushkin Press.

Read an Excerpt

Daniel Mercier went up the stairs at Gare Saint-Lazare as the crowd was pouring down. Men and women hurried distractedly past him, most clutching briefcases but some with suitcases. In the crush, they could easily have knocked into him but they didn’t. On the contrary, it seemed as though they parted to let him through. At the top of the steps, he crossed the main concourse and headed for the platforms. Here too it was crowded with an uninterrupted tide of humanity flowing from the trains. Daniel forged his way through to the arrivals board. The train would arrive at platform 23. He retraced his steps, and stood next to the ticket-punching machines.

At 21.45 train number 78654 creaked into the station and released its passengers. Daniel craned his neck, looking for his wife and son. He saw Véronique first. She waved, then described a circle above her head, finishing her gesture with an astonished look. Jérôme meanwhile made a bee- line for his father, flinging himself at his legs and almost tripping him up. When Véronique reached them, slightly out of breath, she stared at her husband.
‘What on earth is that hat?’
‘It’s Mitterrand’s hat.’
‘I can see it’s Mitterrand’s hat.’
‘No,’ Daniel corrected her. ‘I mean this really is Mitterrand’s hat.’

When he’d told her at the station that it really was Mitterrand’s hat, Véronique had stared at him again, her head on one side, with that little frown she always wore when she was trying to make out if he was having her on or not. The same frown as when Daniel had asked her to marry him, or when he’d first asked her out on a date to an exhibition at the Beaubourg. In other words, the frown that was the reason, amongst others, that he had fallen in love with her.

‘What do you mean?’ she had asked incredulously. ‘Have you got Mitterrand’s hat, Papa?’
‘Yes I have,’ Daniel had replied, grabbing their bags. ‘So you’re the president?’
‘Yep, that’s me. President of the Republic,’ Daniel had answered, delighted by his son’s suggestion.
Daniel had refused to divulge anything further as they drove back.
‘I’ll tell you all about it when we get home.’

Véronique had pressed him, but he stood firm. When they got up to their sixteenth-floor apartment in the fifteenth, Daniel announced that he’d made supper. Cold meat, chicken, tomato and basil salad and cheese. Véronique was impressed – her husband rarely made dinner. First they had an aperitif. ‘Take a seat,’ said Daniel who had still not taken off his hat. Véronique sat. And Jérôme snuggled up beside her.

‘To us,’ said Daniel, solemnly clinking glasses with his wife. Jérôme copied them with his Orangina.

Daniel removed his hat and held it out to Véronique. She took it carefully, running her finger over the felt. Jérôme immediately did the same.

‘Are your hands clean?’ his mother asked anxiously.
The she turned the hat upside down, and her eye fell on the band of leather running round the inside. The two gold letters stood out clearly: F.M. Véronique looked up at her husband.



The evening before, Daniel had stopped his Golf at the junction. He’d turned off the radio, cutting off Caroline Loeb as she droned on about liking cotton wool. The hit song with its slow, insistent refrain was now stuck in his head. He had massaged his aching shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to get the crick out of his neck. He hadn’t had any news from his wife and son since they’d gone to spend the holidays in Normandy with his parents-in- law. Perhaps there would be a message on the answering machine when he got home. The tape was starting to wear out and hadn’t been rewinding properly for the last few days. He should really buy a new machine. How did people manage before answering machines, wondered Daniel? The telephone rang and rang, no one answered it, and then they rang back later, that’s how.

The idea of shopping on his own then making supper for himself in the silent flat was unbearable. He had started fantasising about going to a restaurant – a really good brasserie, perhaps – at about four o’clock that afternoon as he was checking the last of the expenses submitted by the SOGETEC auditors. He hadn’t been to a really good brasserie for at least a year. The last time had been with Véronique and Jérôme. His son, only six at the time, had been very good. They had ordered the seafood platter royale, a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, and a hamburger with mashed potato for Jérôme, who had declared, to his father’s great disappointment, that he didn’t want to try the oysters.

‘Not even one?’
‘No,’ said Jérôme, shaking his head.
Véronique had defended her son, ‘He’s got plenty of time.’ It was true. Jérôme had plenty of time.
It was eight o’clock now, and the early winter cold was already gripping the city, muffling its sounds and the noise of the passing traffic. He had driven past this particular brasserie several times before. Now as he drove tentatively from the boulevard to the next street, he finally spotted it. That was definitely the one, with its big red awning, oyster bar outside, and waiters in spotless white aprons.

A meal all on his own, with no wife and no child, awaited him inside. A meal like he used to enjoy occasionally before he was married. Back then his salary hadn’t extended to anywhere as smart as this. But even in the modest establishments he’d frequented, he had always eaten well, and never felt the need of company as he savoured andouillette, a decent cut of beef, or a dish of whelks. The fading light held the promise of a bachelor evening. What a pleasing phrase.

‘A bachelor evening,’ he repeated, slamming the door of the Golf. Daniel was experiencing the need ‘to find himself,’ as the one of the guests had said on a recent programme on Antenne 2. The guest was a psychotherapist who’d written a book about stress at work, and was on the programme to promote it. Daniel found the concept appealing. This gourmet interlude would allow him to get back in touch with his true self, to throw off the stress of the day, and to forget about accounts and figures and the recent tensions caused by the reorganisation of the finance department. Jean Maltard had taken over as director, and Daniel, who was deputy director, couldn’t see anything good about the appointment. Nothing good at all, not for the department as a whole, nor for him personally. Crossing the boulevard, he was determined to put his worries right out of his mind. When I push through that big door, he told himself, there will be no more Jean Maltard, no more SOGETEC, no more expenses slips, no more VAT. Just me, and a seafood platter royale.



The white-aproned waiter had walked ahead of him down the line of tables where couples, families and tourists sat chatting, smiling or nodding their heads, their mouths full. Along the way, he spotted seafood platters, entrecôte steaks with pommes vapeur, faux-filets with Béarnaise sauce.

When he had first entered, the headwaiter, a rotund man with a slender moustache, had inquired whether he had booked. For a moment, Daniel thought his evening was over.

‘I didn’t have time,’ he answered tonelessly.
The headwaiter had raised an eyebrow and peered closely at the evening’s list of reservations. A young blonde woman came over.
‘Twelve called to cancel half an hour ago,’ she said, pointing to a name on the list.
‘And no one thought to tell me?’ The headwaiter was visibly annoyed.
‘I thought Françoise had told you,’ the girl said offhandedly, wandering off.

The maître d’ had closed his eyes for a moment, his pained expression suggesting the full extent of the self- control required not to explode with fury at this latest blunder.
‘Allow us to show you to your table, Monsieur,’ he said to Daniel, nodding to a waiter, who immediately hurried over.

All brasseries have brilliant white tablecloths that hurt the eyes, like snow on the ski slopes. The glasses and the silverware really do sparkle. For Daniel, the characteristic glitter of tableware in the best brasseries was the embodiment of luxury. The waiter returned with the menu, and the wine list. Daniel opened the red leatherette folder and began to read. The prices were much higher than he had imagined, but he decided not to worry about that. The plateau royal de fruits de mer was framed in the middle of the page, in elegant calligraphy: fines de claire creuses et plates de Bretagne, half a crab, three different kinds of clam, prawns, langoustines, whelks, shrimps, cockles and winkles.

Daniel took the wine list and looked for a Pouilly-Fuissé or -Fumé. This, too, was more expensive than he had anticipated. Daniel ordered his platter, adding a half- bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé.

‘I’m afraid we only have bottles,’ said the waiter. Daniel didn’t want to appear miserly.
‘A bottle will be fine,’ he said, closing the wine list.

Couples, on the whole. Tables of men in ties and grey suits like his own, except that theirs were clearly from the best designer labels. They might even have been made to measure. The four fifty-somethings seated a little further down must be celebrating the end of a tough day and the signature of a decent contract. The quartet sipped at glasses of no doubt excellent wine. They each wore the calm, confident smile of a man who has succeeded in life. At another table beneath the large mirrors, an elegant brunette in a red dress was listening to a grey-haired man who Daniel could see only from the back. She was half- listening, in fact; from time to time her gaze wandered around the room, before returning to the speaker opposite her. She looked bored.

The wine waiter brought a silver ice bucket on a stand, the bottle of Pouilly bobbing amongst the ice cubes. The waiter took hold of the corkscrew and performed the ritual opening, passing the cork under his nose. Daniel tasted the wine which seemed good to him. He was not one of those enlightened wine buffs who can distinguish every last nuance of flavour in a fine cru, and discourse on it at length, in sophisticated terms. The wine waiter, in time- honoured fashion, awaited his customer’s opinion with an air of vague condescension. Daniel gave an approving nod designed to indicate great erudition on the subject of white Burgundy. The wine waiter gave a small smile, filled his glass and departed.

A few moments later, a waiter placed a round stand in the middle of the table, a sign that the seafood platter was about to arrive. Next came a basket of pumpernickel bread, a ramekin of shallot vinaigrette, and the butter dish. Daniel buttered a piece of bread and dipped it discreetly in the vinaigrette – a ritual he performed every time he ate a seafood platter in a restaurant. The taste of the vinegar was chased away by a mouthful of chilled wine. He gave a satisfied sigh. Yes, he had found himself.

The platter arrived, the seafood arranged by species on a bed of crushed ice. Daniel took an oyster, held a quarter of lemon immediately above it, and squeezed gently. A drop of lemon juice fell onto the delicate membrane, which squirmed immediately. Absorbed by the oyster’s iridescent gleam, he nevertheless noticed the next-door table being moved to one side. Looking up, he saw the moustachioed headwaiter smiling at a new customer. A man who removed his red scarf, then his coat and hat and slipped onto the banquette beside Daniel.

‘Should I take your things to the cloakroom?’ asked the maître d’, immediately.
‘No, no. I’ll just leave them here on the banquette. If they’re not bothering you, Monsieur?’
‘No,’ said Daniel in a barely audible voice. ‘Not at all,’ he added in a whisper. François Mitterrand had just sat down next to him.

Editorial Reviews

'A hymn to la vie Parisienne' The Guardian

'A fable of romance and redemption' The Telegraph

'Captures the same romantic, whimsical, nostalgic feeling that the film Amélie did so well—partly because it is set in the 1980s, so before computers, mobile phones and social networking, partly as the plot is also driven by accident and chance. One of the pleasures of the book is that it is a personal, special discovery. You feel that you have stumbled across a book that nobody else knows about. Your relationship with the book is the same as that of the various characters to the hat itself—you are blessed to have come across it' The Guardian

'As entertaining as it is original, this is the story to enjoy like a chocolate with a surprise centre' Marie France

'Teeters pleasantly on the edge of Gallic whimsy' The Guardian

'Impossible to resist' L'Express

'Flawless . . . a funny, clever, feel-good social satire with the page-turning quality of a great detective novel' Rosie Goldsmith, European Literature Network

'An enchanting, irresistible story which flows quickly and effortlessly from one vivid character to the next, capturing their essence in a minimum of words and with a vitality that never ceases to surprise and delight' Lancashire Evening Post

'Antoine Laurain’s delightful The President’s Hat remains my favourite book of 2013 . . . an absolute gem, guaranteed to make you smile' Susan Osborne

'Full of charm and humour, this short book looks at how a small change in attitude can have significant differences to lives. It’s a delightful little read' The Bookbag

'Its gentle satirical humor reminded me of Jacques Tati’s classic films, and, no, you don’t have to know French politics to enjoy this novel' Library Journal

'The most feel-good book I’ve read in years' Francofille

'Part eccentric romance, part detective story . . . this book makes perfect holiday reading' The Lady

'A quirky, enchanting love story that will surely soften the hardest of cynics' We Love This Book

'An inspired and delicious fable' Version Femina

'A clever game of cat-and-mouse, bringing back a whole host of memories of the period it perfectly re-enacts' 20 Minutes

'This is a simple tale that is entertaining, but it is also a tale that speaks more profoundly of the human attachment to objects as desired sources of power' Bookslut

'I loved this book for its quirky story, its embracing humanism, its clever reenactment of the 1980s with all those '80s icons of art and politics, and its wonderful characters' Readallday.com

'A whimsical flavor of Paris. The characters are warm, believable and authentic, the setting and situations are well drawn which all contribute to making this a captivating, quick read' Monsters & Critics

'Like Cinderella's glass slipper or Aladdin's lamp, the hat is a talisman that makes its wearers' dreams come true' RTL

'Effortlessly combines a skillfully woven story and the emblems of the eighties' L'Express

'Clever, revealing, funny and caustic, this novel charmingly paints a cast of characters and brings the eighties vividly back to life' Télé Loisirs

'We're in safe hands with Antoine Laurain, the man behind this sweet, lively, nostalgic tale' Livres Hebdo

'Subtle, inventive, and often funny' L'Avenir

From the Publisher