People absolutely cared about "C'était ça ou mourir", his publisher ended up dropping him. The reason the success continued is that people denied that he used AI and had all sorts of shaky political reasons for this (e.g. claiming that Haitian writing trips up AI detectors). Even the reason it got popular in the first place is to do with the themes of the novel rather than its writing.
> his publisher ended up dropping him
That's not really the point. Critics the world over LOVED the book; they only distanced themselves from it when it became clear it was AI, but when they didn't know, they couldn't stop raving about it.
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