Atrocity Exhibitions: Grieving in the TikTok Underworld

Atrocity Exhibitions: Grieving in the TikTok Underworld is a short sharp literary shock from acclaimed songwriter and musician Owen Williams. With blistering honesty, Williams examines the particular grief he feels in the wake of his mother's suicide through the prism of a certain social media platform—'the Atrocity Exhibition'. Through the Exhibition's various galleries and spaces we come into contact with trauma-grift, 'lolcows', cruelty, paganism, Joan Didion and illness, de Sade and sexuality, and of course J.G. Ballard—all dissected with the deftest of prose touches and building into a frank accounting of the delusions and deceptions we all build so much of our selves from—both on and off-line. "Written from a position of grief, confusion and hope, Owen Williams' short book is an insightful chronicle of the trap of modern culture. A vital, clear-eyed, deeply personal reckoning with the algorithm."—John Higgs

"A short, startling book that is so many things: an anatomy of a suicide, a reckoning with a mother and a mind, and a trip into virtual plains of grief and loneliness, falling in and out of step with Bytedance, Ballard and Lacan. Already one of the UK's most intriguing and arresting singer-songwriters, Owen Williams' non-fiction debut will stick to your bones."—Jude Rogers

"A short, sharp, and entirely perfect shock—elegantly conjures the paranoia and disorientation of living, and grieving, in the online age."—Philippa Snow

"A cosmic nightmare. Dragging Ballard's interrogation of death, spectacle, and eroticism into the social media age, Williams picks at the screen to reveal the festering—but wilfully ignored—wounds at our fingertips. This ruthlessly self-aware and bitterly funny book searches for signs of life among the remains of a lost civilization, before the internet made performers of us all and things like art and shame were considered important. It's an undertaking I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies, but remarkably Williams stares deep into the digital abyss and finds it full of beauty."—Emma Garland

© 2026 Rough Trade Books (E-bog): 9781914236631

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 29. januar 2026