Les Éditions du Boréal said Wednesday that it was ending its professional relationship with Thélyson Orélien after an external examination found traces of artificial-intelligence tags in metadata attached to some working documents for his novel C’était ça ou mourir, or It Was Either That or Die. The publisher said it would not reprint the book or publish further work by the Haitian Canadian author.
The decision followed weeks of controversy surrounding the novel, which had become a literary success and won the Prix du Roman Fnac before being removed from the 2026 Prix Goncourt selection in September. Allegations first circulated publicly on social media, where an account said tests by the Pangram detection system indicated extensive AI-generated text. The novel follows a Haitian refugee’s journey to Quebec and draws on Orélien’s experience leaving Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Boréal initially stood by Orélien and worked with him to assemble documentation about how the novel was written. The publisher said those efforts did not resolve the question, after which Orélien said he would provide no further material. Boréal then collected the manuscript’s working versions and commissioned an outside analysis. The examination produced what the publisher described as traces of AI markers in the metadata of certain documents, but it did not establish how extensively artificial intelligence was used or provide a definitive account of the writing process.
Orélien has repeatedly denied that a machine generated any sentence in the novel. He has said he used AI for research, including foreign idioms and historical material, while maintaining that he began writing the book in 2017 and completed a first draft of more than 300 pages in 2019. In an October statement, he described the accusations as an attack on both the book and his identity as a writer; he later said he had explained his use of AI for research but believed his statements were no longer being accepted.
The controversy has also included separate allegations that passages from some of Orélien’s earlier Canadian and French writing closely resembled existing texts. He acknowledged plagiarism in earlier work and called those actions unacceptable mistakes from his youth, while continuing to deny that AI wrote his novel. Boréal said the book had been scheduled for another printing and had agreements involving more than 20 countries, giving the decision consequences beyond Canada. A major Quebec bookstore chain said it would continue selling available copies while demand remained, while the president of Quebec’s writers’ union praised the break but urged Boréal to disclose more detail about the evidence.