What role did Nicolas Sarkozy's dual heritage from Hungary and Thessaloniki play in shaping his political personality? And why does he self-identify in his first speech after being elected President of the French Republic as the son of a Hungarian and the grandson of a Greek?

The narrative of the French president's family history resembles a novel. A novel that spans four centuries in Europe, with the narrator-heroes being his grandfather, the Thessaloniki doctor Beniko Mallah, and his father, the Hungarian advertiser Pal Sarkozy de Nagy Bosca.

The Mallahs, his maternal ancestors, had been living in Thessaloniki since the 16th century and were prominent members of the Jewish Community, this great Sephardic metropolis of the Balkans. They were rabbis, jewelers, journalists, and politicians. The Mallah family produced a senator with Eleftherios Venizelos’ Liberal Party and a member of parliament with Dimitrios Gounaris’ party.

The Sarkozys were Hungarian nobles and warriors who resisted the Ottoman Empire. The union of these two worlds against the backdrop of post-war Paris in the 1950s resulted, many decades later, in a president for France.

This centuries-old and fascinating story is described in the pages of the book `Me, the grandson of a Greek`.