In America at least, Primary Colors is a minor cause celebre. It’s not that this ‘novel of politics’ arrives slap-bang in the middle of the current round of primaries (although it does), and nor is it the book’s author. Just the opposite -- Primary Colors has no author. Leastways, not one prepared at this stage to fess up.

There is a consensus that whoever Anonymous is, they must have been close to Bill Clinton’s campaign in the 1992 Democratic primaries. But then again there are just as many will tell you there’s nothing in here that a keen imagination and stack of press clippings couldn’t have put together. Go figure.

As our story opens Henry Burton is the black -- "I am small and not so dark" -- deputy campaign manager drafted onto the team to elect Jack Stanton, Governor of some obscure Southern state, as Democratic nominee in the forthcoming race for the Whitehouse. Henry is under no illusion that he boosts the racial profile of the Stanton campaign, but espies in the Governor a man who is sincerely colour-blind. His enthusiasm for the man is genuine and heartfelt, the novel processing Henry and his reader through the cross-country politicking necessary if a humble country boy is to go all the way.

It scarcely takes a brain to read Stanton for Clinton, his steely wife Susan for the saintly Hilary, so that when her trashy hairdresser Cashmere shows up touting fuck-&-tell tapes, it carries a horribly familiar ring. Henry and the spin doctors take care of that problem (a little too?) easily, but are working full-time when one of Stanton’s black constituents fetches up with his pregnant teenage daughter. And there are the opponents, one of whom ups and has a heart attack allowing in a too-popular everyman to steal headlines -- maybe even the big prize -- from the ailing Stanton.

What’s immediately clear from this elegantly written book is the swampy murk of modern American politics. "This is about the ability to lead," Stanton says at one point. "It’s not about perfection." Which is just as well -- so much of what happens seems to be more about papering over ever-widening cracks than anything politically substantial. Everything is about not letting slip anything to the "scorps" -- scorpions -- of the omnivorous press. Anonymous pretty much confirms the commonly held view that to even begin the race to the Oval Office you have to have a closet full of skeletons banging on the door for a prime time introduction. The final choice is about putting a cross next to the least worst.

The book is surprisingly sympathetic to the candidate, given everything. He becomes a figurehead, an expert with the brilliantly judged anonymously-intimate handshake and "Force Nine" eye contact. He has an unfortunate tendency to inhale food. Like his boss, Henry is allowed some pretty vigorous "campaign sex", and even at one point some swift, down and dirty rolling with the candidate’s wife. If this thing was written inside the Clinton camp, etc, etc.

How much Primary Colors grips depends, of course, on how interesting you find American politics. Over there it’s become revelatory (this is the country that, without a hint of irony, elected Ronald Reagan, twice) and frightening. Over here it just makes us grateful for what little decency we’ve got. Recommended.