Awkardly written, either by Kamel Daoud, or the translation by John Cullen from the French. I don't know which parts were literal and which were metaphor.
This is the French way of writing. See "Simulacra and Simulation" by Baudrillard for more examples of this writing style.
Baudrillard is fun every once in a while, but it's certainly not accurate to describe a controversial, notoriously abstruse poststructuralist philosopher as typical of "the French way of writing."