In this article, Geordie Cheetham looks at Houellebecq’s first published work, a biography of the American author H. P. Lovecraft. How does disgust with the modern world become a fitting object of literary study, when Houellebecq approvingly cites Lovecraft’s disdain for all forms of realism? And what does a corpse surrounded by shopping trolleys Nouvelles Galeries have to do with it?

We are told that love is a primal force: innate, ahistorical, transcendental and above society. But how can something be truly innate if it is a concept that exists within the act of telling? CLC Columnist Mila Edensor explores such intriguing questions in this excellent analysis of early modern Portuguese poetry. From the unrequited love of men in the late 1500s, to the ‘passport bro’ of today, Edensor skilfully explores what this obscure poetry can mean for us today.

In this intriguing column, CLC Columnist Geordie Cheetham expertly explores the man behind some of France’s most popular tales of anomie and despair: Michel Houellebecq.

Through her insightful comparison of Fontane’s Effie Briest with Gabriele Reuter’s Aus guter Familie, German columnist Maddie Hazelden traces both the shelves of a bookshop and the history of literature in this intriguing critique of German literary practices.

In this first article of her column, Germanistik: In search of the female writer, Maddie Hazelden critically explores the inequality in gender representation in the Germanistik curriculum at the University of Bonn.

In her second column on the epics, Hanna Simojoki shares a nuanced insight into the history and rediscovery of what is thought to be the world’s oldest literary masterpiece

Columnist Martha Leggett discusses the legacy left by female-only salons in French literary culture.

In the second instalment of her column Izzie Hackett reflects on the thin lines we craft between fiction and reality, the diverging paths that entangle these lines, and the stories we tell ourselves through some of the most famous Latin American writers and their stories.

In the first instalment of her column Izzie Hackett explores the spectral undertones of Juan Rulfo’s Mexico by looking at the author’s photography and its relationship to the novel Pedro Páramo.