“I read too, more every time, a pleasant way to trick boredom, death, to trick thought itself by distracting it, by distancing it from the truth, the only truth, which is: we are all caged animals who live for pleasure, in obscurity.” p.13
“Sometimes we sense the situation is escaping us, that things are getting out of hand; we become afraid and instead of calmly looking, trying to understand, we react like a dog caught in barbed wire, thrashing about madly until it slices open its throat.” p.99
“I am what I have read, I am what I have seen, I have as much Arab in me as Spanish or French, I have been multiplied in those mirrors until I have been lost or rebuilt, fragile image, image in motion.” p.271
Mathias Enard, Street of Thieves (trans. Charlotte Mandell)
Time's Flow Stemmed 
I opted for the smooth grassiness of Sencha tea, but a Fitou might have been good company, perhaps Bertrand Bergé’s Les Mégalithes.
Definitely the case with Zone. This is more conventional but so well-written; a book of ideas but never feels polemical as his characters are so fully realised.
Thank you.