The French author who has accused former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her does not identify him by name in her latest book, referring instead to a “pig” and a “baboon man”. A publishing source told AFP on Wednesday that Tristane Banon’s “Le bal des hypocrites” (The Hypocrites’ Ball) is a 128-page novelisation of her role in the Strauss-Kahn scandal, and that no full names are given to the protagonists. The 32-year-old writer accuses Strauss-Kahn of luring her to an unfurnished Paris flat in 2003 and assaulting her — forcing her to fight him off.
Strauss-Kahn has admitted to police having made an “advance” on Banon, who is 30 years his junior and the daughter of a family friend, but he angrily denies any violence and has lodged a counter-suit for defamation. Banon first made the claim in 2007 on a television chat show — dubbing the Socialist politician a “rutting chimpanzee” — but she did not lodge a formal complaint until this year, after Strauss-Kahn was charged in another case.
