Author writes book about her affair with disgraced IMF chief

A French author has written in graphic detail about her eight-month affair with disgraced IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, calling the relationship "field work" for a controversial new book.

The book by Argentinian-born Marcela Iacub, a columnist with the left-wing daily , was denounced by Strauss-Kahn and the wife he has separated from, journalist Anne Sinclair.

In , due to be released on February 27, Iacub says she had a relationship with Strauss-Kahn from January to August 2012, in the midst of the scandal over accusations he sexually assaulted a New York hotel maid.

She doesn't name Strauss-Kahn in the book, but she told Thursday's magazine that it was about him, while admitting that she had mixed fiction with reality.

"The steps of the affair, the locations, the words reported, everything is true," she said, though she said she took poetic licence with the sex scenes.

Crude language abounds in the book, in which she calls the main character "half-man, half-pig", though she considers the word pig a compliment.

"What there is that is creative, artistic, in Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the beautiful things, belong to the pig and not to the man," she said.