about

We got tired of books that tell you how to feel.

Every book club eventually asks the same question: is this character good or bad? We decided that was the wrong question. The books that stay with us — the ones we're still arguing about weeks later — are the ones where that question doesn't have an answer. A tutor who kills to protect a feeling. A translator who betrays an empire to build a better one. A monster who is only a monster because no one taught him otherwise. We built a club around the discomfort of rooting for someone you shouldn't.

Literary Baddies meets monthly in Luxembourg, with a growing presence in Paris. We read one book at a time, slowly enough to actually finish it, and we show up to disagree with each other on purpose. There's wine, there's a playlist, and there's always someone defending the antagonist a little too passionately.

how we choose

No genre rules. Literary fiction, myth retellings, horror, sci-fi — the only filter is moral complexity. If everyone in the room agrees on who the villain is by the last page, we probably picked wrong.

who's running this

[Founder bio placeholder — drop in the real bio here when ready; nothing fabricated in the meantime.]