PARIS, Oct 6, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Bruno Le Maire, named France's new defence minister on Sunday, was the longest serving senior minister in Emmanuel Macron's French government, holding the reins of public finances and the economy from 2017 to 2024.

Le Maire, 56, also has a side career as an author, penning over a dozen non-fiction and fiction books, including one recent novel with a brazenly erotic passage that went viral, leaving critics and fans wondering how he manages to squeeze it all in.

He bowed out in September last year, with the country's public finances under unprecedented pressure, saying he wanted "to breathe a different air from (that of) politics" and would "return to my first vocation: teaching".

But on Sunday, he announced on X he had accepted Macron's offer to head the defence ministry.

"In the exceptional circumstances France is going through, one cannot shy away," Le Maire said on X.

"I am here to serve the French people. I am here to serve our soldiers. I will do so with the passion and determination that have always guided me in my public commitment," he added.

- Covid-19, Ukraine war -

A protege of Dominique de Villepin, the former French prime minister and foreign minister, Le Maire cut his teeth on the agriculture brief in Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing government.

Le Maire joined Macron's centrist government in 2017 from the right-wing Republicans, whose nomination he had unsuccessfully sought to stand in the 2017 presidential polls.

For critics including his former colleagues on the right, the move smacked of opportunism -- especially as during the campaign Le Maire had slammed Macron as a "man without a project because he is a man without convictions".

But Le Maire comfortably settled into his job, ever ready to reassure the public about the health of the French economy with a flurry of statistics in his numerous TV interviews.

The man known in French politics by his initials "BLM" steered France through economic shocks including the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while always warning of the potential risks that lie ahead.

- 'Personal balance' -

A side career in writing is nothing unusual for a French politician but his novel "Fugue americaine" ("American Fugue") -- his 13th book -- raised several eyebrows.

It was devoted to the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, through the story of two brothers, Franz and Oskar Wertheimer, who travel to Cuba to attend one of his concerts and whose lives are then turned upside down.

But it is one single page of the novel, widely shared and the target of mockery on social media, that has taken all the attention.

It describes Oskar having sex with a woman named as Julia in excitedly erotic and also deeply explicit terms including the phrase "dilated like never before" which instantly became one of the biggest social media hashtag trends of 2023.

"If there were only politics -- without the freedom that literary and romantic creation gives -- politics would not be enough," he once told AFP.

In a statement on Twitter, Le Maire acknowledged that many followers were curious about "how I find the time to write while I am a minister".

He added that while he was devoted to his job he had also learned to take care of "my personal balance".

"Some people go to museums, cinemas, concerts, the football. Others do the gardening or go hiking. As for me, I write."

"It's a need that makes it worthwhile to get up early, go to bed late and to devote weekends and holidays to this."