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French Socialist presidential candidate Ségoléne Royal talks about her private life and public ambitions in a book to be published less than one month before the elections.

In Maintenant (Now), Royal shows her softer side in response to questions about her family, but also attacks her main rivals in the electoral campaign.

"The advice I give myself is to make it to the runoff and to win," Royal is quoted as saying in the book, a compilation of her thoughts in interview form. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which is to be released Tuesday, weeks before the April 22 first round of voting.

Royal, 53, gives her readers a peek into her private life and tries to put an end to rumours about the status of her relationship, confirming she still lives with François Hollande, the head of her political party and father of her four children.

"Yes, we are still together and, yes, we still live together," she said.

Questions about the relationship have hung in the air since the start of the candidate's campaign last September. They grew more pressing when the pair, who have never married, appeared at odds on some policy issues.

Royal - whose unorthodox policy suggestions, like a proposal to require military supervision for juvenile delinquents, have angered fellow leftists - also stresses her commitment to the Socialist party.

"I was born into a right-wing milieu," said Royal, who was one of eight children in a military family. "I do not share (the right's) social pessimism, its respect for the established disorder, its veneration for laissez-faire economics," she said. "It was in leftist politics that I discovered the desire for emancipation and fraternity."

She lays into the governing UMP party's candidate, front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy, who she characterizes as a power-hungry control freak.

Sarkozy's "desire to control everything" is "worrisome" for France, she is quoted as saying. Criticism of policies Sarkozy introduced during his tenure as interior minister and critiques of his campaign promises pepper the 331-page-long book. Royal also lashes out at centre-right politician François Bayrou, saying his ambition to overcome the right-left split that has long dominated French politics is "an illusion."

"Attempting to blur the borders, that's making fun" of the French people, she said.

Royal also saves a measure of criticism for herself. When asked what her main defect is, she responded: "I think I have too high an opinion of myself."

"But I'm aware of it," she said.

Publishing a book has become nearly de rigeur for French politicians aiming for the country's top job. In 1980, Royal's mentor, the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, released a book just before taking office. Outgoing President Jacques Chirac recently published a book of interviews, and Sarkozy's summer release made the country's best-seller list.