White Rabbit Books: Lias Saoudi - Ten Thousand Apologies

This event will be 20.30-21.30 followed by a book signing.

Lias Saoudi will be discussing his book Ten Thousand Apologies, co-authored with Adelle Stripe. From the mountains of Algeria to the squats of South London via sectarian Northern Ireland, Ten Thousand Apologies is the sordid and thrilling story of the country's most notorious cult band, Fat White Family.

Lias will be in conversation with Daniel Dylan Wray.

Like a tragicomic penny dreadful dreamed up by a mutant hybrid of Jean Genet, the Dadaists and Mark E. Smith, the Fat Whites' story is a frequently jaw-dropping epic of creative insurrection, narcotic excess, mental illness, wanderlust, self-sabotage, fractured masculinity, and the ruthless pursuit of absolute art.

Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi and acclaimed author Adelle Stripe, Ten Thousand Apologies is that rare thing: a music book that barely features any music, a biography as literary as any novel, and a confessional that does not seek forgiveness. This is the definitive account of Fat White Family's disgraceful and radiant jihad - a depraved, romantic and furious gesture of refusal to a sanitised era.

“A jaw-dropping rollercoaster of tragi-comic mishaps and gargantuan drug consumption” Rolling Stone UK

Lias Kaci Saoudi is a writer, artist and musician, and the front man of genre-bending iconoclasts Fat White Family. Born to a British mother and Algerian father, he grew up in the Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland, before moving to London and gaining a Fine Art degree from Slade School of Art. During the first UK lockdown, Lias began contributing a series of unflinching autobiographical pieces entitled Life Beyond the Neutral Zone to the online cultural hub,The Social Gathering. He is published in The New Frontier: Reflections From the Irish Border (New Island Books, 2021) - an anthology of new writing from some of Ireland’s greatest contemporary authors marking the centenary of partition. He is also the debut guest editor of Ambit Pop, a new annual issue of the venerable quarterly arts magazine. His first book,Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure, co-written with Adelle Stripe (Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, Bloomsbury, 2019), is described by Miranda Sawyer in The Observer as “the story of a band that’s always on the brink: of stardom, of madness, of brilliance, of disgrace”. It was published by White Rabbit Books in 2022.

Daniel Dylan Wray is a freelance arts journalist, writing about music, film, television, documentary books and other areas for publications such as: the Guardian, VICE, Pitchfork, Uncut, Bandcamp, Loud & Quiet, Noisey, I-D, Little White Lies, Dazed, the Quietus, Long Live Vinyl, The Independent and several others.