SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE. Co-written with lucidity and humour by singer Lias Saoudi from The Fat White Family 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.
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. Loved and loathed in equal measure since their formation in 2011, the relentlessly provocative, stunningly dysfunctional “drug band with a rock problem” have dedicated themselves to constant chaos and total creative freedom at all costs.
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.
‘The story of a band that’s always on the brink: of stardom, of madness, of brilliance, of disgrace’
Miranda Sawyer, Observer
‘You begin to wonder why more biographies aren’t tackled with such invention’
Record Collector
‘This book is a rarity’
Mark Lanegan
‘One of the finest music books in aeons’
Kevin Barry
