An article Le Pen by Julian Barnes in today's Guardian makes for a good read over a morning coffee. a book read a couple of days ago made for a very eerie feeling when thinking of the extreme right raising its ugly, pig ignorant head in France these days.

Published back in 1996, Marie Darrieussecq's "Pig Tales" is a brilliantly lean novel, dripping with succulent food for thought. It is a postmodern fable that reclaims Kafka in its depiction of a young woman that turns into a pig, with a dreamy dash of Sade for good measure, mixed in to a dystopian framework. As she transmogrifies, the sexual and political perversions that make up the backdrop are never clearly stated - the horror residing in what is left unsaid. Or said with few razor-sharp words.

And a beautiful last line: "when I crane my neck towards the moon, it's to show, once again, a human face".