Yet, it is this lingering undercurrent of melancholy hand-in-hand with a kindness and sensitivity that is evident both in her personality and books that draws readers to Lang, catapulting her debut novel Sad Girls to number three on Kinokuniya’s list of UAE best-sellers. She looks anything but melancholic except perhaps for her choice of all black attire – smart tie-neck blouse and trousers – but that could just be a clever fashion ploy by the erstwhile fashion designer who before jumping headlong into her career as a writer founded award-winning fashion label Akina (it won the Qantas Spirit of Youth Award). The smiling woman in front of me has been excitedly gabbing away about her panel discussion that took place the night before at the Sharjah Book Fair (which is what has brought her from down under to the UAE), upcoming projects, and the special friendship she struck up with Shaikha Boudour Bint Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, daughter of the ruler of Sharjah. It had a profound impact on my work – I write a lot about melancholy and struggle because that’s what I grew up around.
‘I was an 11 month-old baby when we settled in Australia, so I don’t remember much of my time at the refugee camp but growing up in a predominantly migrant town west of Sydney, which was a mishmash of cultures from war-torn countries meant there was this melancholy that permeated the air, a certain heaviness you could feel. ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ the soft-spoken author agrees without missing a beat, leaning in to narrate how her Cambodian parents fled the Khmer Rouge regime to a Thailand refugee camp before immigrating to Australia. I ask her how much of it is self-referential as we sit across each other in a cosy corner at Borders, Mall of the Emirates, chatting over coffee, an hour before her book signing at the bookstore. ‘People who are prone to sadness are more likely to pick up a pen.' There’s a haunting timbre to this line from Kiwi poet and author Lang Leav’s debut novel, Sad Girls.
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