Maximilien Laroche, who taught the world to read Haitian oraliture, is born

Maximilien Laroche was born at Cap-Haitien on 5 April 1937. He took a licence in French literature and a master’s in Spanish at the Universite de Montreal in 1962 and settled in Quebec, where he taught at Universite Laval. He built the bridge between Haitian and Quebecois writing and made the case for oraliture, the literature carried in the mouth rather than the book. He published more on Haitian literature than any other critic living outside the country. He died in Quebec on 27 July 2017.