 In this regard, the novels make use of a number of leitmotifs which recur in different combinations between novels (a technique also employed by Marguerite Duras), in particular the suicide of an eighteenth-century ancestor and the death of a contemporary relative by sniper-fire.Finally, almost all of Simon's novels feature horses; Simon was himself an accomplished equestrian, and fought in a mounted regiment during World War II (the ridiculousness of mounted soldiers fighting in a mechanised war is a major theme of "La Route des Flandres" and "Les Géorgiques").Simon's principal obsession, however, is with the ways in which humans experience time (another Modernist fascination).