"My life is not a novel,” says Rachida Dati, the glamorous, Muslim-born French Justice Minister who, at 43, has become a single mother and refused to identify the father.

I beg to differ. Not only is Dati's life a novel, it reads like a peculiarly French novel, a tale of rags to riches, sex, haute couture, power and old-fashioned hypocrisy, culminating in a fascinating whodunnit - or, more precisely, whosiredit?

While maintaining the traditional po-faced assertion that “news stops at the bedroom door”, the French media - indeed, le tout Paris - talks of little other than the mysterious paternity of Zohra Dati, who arrived in the world on Friday at a private Paris clinic.

A denial of fatherhood has become de rigueur in certain elevated French circles. Among those who have denied impregnating the Justice Minister are Bernard Laporte, the French Secretary of State for Sports and a former rugby coach, Dominique Desseigne, the casino and hotel magnate, and José María Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister.

François Sarkozy, younger brother of the President, was spotted at the clinic on Sunday night, setting off more speculation. Others rumoured to be the father include a popular television show host, a former boyfriend, a Danish sperm donor and even Nicolas Sarkozy himself.

For nine months Dati has gestated with impressive French hauteur. “My private life is complicated, and I am keeping it off limits,” she said. Within hours of giving birth, she was back at work, studying her ministerial papers in bed. She is expected to attend a Cabinet meeting tomorrow.

When he appointed her as justice chief in 2007, Sarkozy described Dati as “a symbol”: the first person of North African origin to hold a senior government post, and now the first single mother in the French Cabinet. But with the birth of Zohra, Dati has also become a symbol of another sort: of a French woman's right to continue in high office regardless of the complexity of her private life, a right that has been exercised by male French politicians since time immemorial.

French voters expect their leaders to have liaisons outside marriage and between five and seven in the afternoon, le cinq à sept. Successive French presidents were believed to have kept mistresses, although this was not reported since that would be vulgar. In their recent book, Sexus Politicus, Christophe Dubois and Christophe Deloire write that “far from being a flaw, to cast yourself in the role of seducer is without doubt an important quality in our political life”.

The daughter of an illiterate Moroccan brick-layer and one of 12 children, Dati's rise from poverty in a sprawling housing project to the heights of French politics has been swift. Intensely ambitious, as a student she bombarded possible patrons, including Sarkozy, with job applications and advice. The “Cinderella of the Housing Estates”, as she is nicknamed, was then plucked from obscurity to act as spokesman for the Sarkozy presidential campaign at the end of 2006.

As Sarkozy's marriage [to his former wife, Cécilia] collapsed, Dati became France's de facto first lady. She was seen as invulnerable, even though her brutal style of management earned her numerous enemies among the judiciary. Magistrates accused her of “incoherent policies” and interference. Several aides quit, saying that she was impossible to work with. Yet Dati seemed to float stylishly above the more sordid realities of French politics. She posed for Paris Match in a pink designer dress and high-heeled boots.

The announcement of her pregnancy was buried in an otherwise boring interview in Le Monde. Fellow ministers congratulated her but without saying what for- very French. When asked whether she intended to scale back work during her pregnancy, Dati was sharp: “It's not an illness.”

The media has since observed the tradition of saying nothing about the possible father, while speculating feverishly in private. As with the revelation that François Mitterrand kept a mistress and daughter, press pundits will doubtless claim later that they knew all along. The truth is that they probably do not.

“The more people search to romanticise my life, the more they look to deny me legitimacy,” she insists. “I've worked hard, that's all.” Yet her modern romantic story has enabled Dati to emerge as a heroine to swaths of the electorate: to the huge and under-represented North African minority; to women determined that motherhood should not interfere with career progress; to unmarried mothers and later mothers, at a time when half of all French children are born out of wedlock and the average age of motherhood is approaching 30.

Beneath the froth of speculation there is an important political subplot. Before the announcement of Dati's pregnancy, Sarkozy was said to be tiring of his Justice Minister, whose taste for expensive clothes and glossy photo shoots matches his own. She had made powerful enemies, and relations with the President's new wife, Carla Bruni, were reported to be cool.

But Sarkozy has made much of his feminist credentials, and he seems highly unlikely to sack the first single mother in the French Cabinet. So far from being an impediment to her mother's political career, Zohra Dati could turn out to be a most welcome plot-twist in the strangest of political fairy tales.

Cinderella will stay at the ball, without a Prince Charming in sight.

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