Dominique Strauss-Kahn is to ask a court to confiscate a new book by a former lover in which he is portrayed as a “half-man, half-pig”.

• Ex-lover depicts DSK as 'half-man, half-pig' (21 Feb 13)

Lawyers for the disgraced former IMF chief are due before a judge on Tuesday to demand that Marcela Iacub’s book 'Belle et bête' (Beauty and the Beast), which is due out the following day, be taken off the shelves. Alternatively, his lawyers are demanding a flyer be placed in each book but did not go into detail what it would say.

Iacub’s book recounts the sordid details of the pair’s seven-month affair in 2012 as DSK was in the midst of a sex scandal following accusations he had sexually assaulted a hotel maid in New York.

But DSK is furious and the former finance minister is now suing Iacub and the book’s publisher Stock for “an attack on his private life”.

Strauss-Kahn, who has called the book an 'abomination' is seeking €100,000 in damages and compensation from Iacub and Stock and a similar amount from Le Nouvel Observateur, which published extracts of the book and an interview with Iacub last week.

The article in the Nouvel Obs, which included the author's depiction of DSK as a "half-man, half pig" made headlines around the world when it was published.

"Everything that is creative, artistic or beautiful with Dominique Strauss-Kahn belongs to the pig and not to the man. The man is terrible, the pig is wonderful, even if it is a pig," she told Nouvel Observateur in an interview.

Iacub said her motivation for having the affair with DSK was to do some 'field work' so she could later write a book about it. She also said she felt transformed into a "saint" who had the job of saving someone so "hated and despised".

Iacub admits that some of the sex scenes in her novel were made up, but everything about the affair was authentic.

In an open letter to the editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, DSK expressed his "disgust" at both the magazine and the author. He called the book an abomination.

Iacub's new work is the latest in a long line of books, plays, TV shows and movies on the spectacular fall from grace of a man who was once tipped to become France's next president.

The Socialist politician in December agreed a financial settlement with the hotel maid whose 2011 allegation of sexual assault forced him to resign from the International Monetary Fund.

But the silver-haired 63-year-old is still being investigated in France as part of a probe into allegations he procured prostitutes for sex parties in Europe and in Washington.