Langdimania – a novel for young adults – is published today

Edinburgh resident Lach (pronounced “Latch”) is a bona fide music legend, who has turned his hand to writing now with his first novel, Langdimania, which is published today.

This is a genre-busting fantasy adventure for young adults. LANGDIMANIA is fiction but draws from experience of a father telling his son bedtime stories, a husband mourning his wife, a grown man trying to make some sense of childhood experiences.

A high school boy called Army Is the hero whose quest transports him between the real and imagined worlds. There is also a dream girl who features as heroine.

This is a novel that, for young readers and adult readers of young-adult fiction alike, asks as many questions as it offers answers and raises weighty themes, including: identity and sense of self, otherness and difference, power and control, objective reality and subjective personal experience, moral accountability, teenage mental health, the discovery of romantic love and parental presence (or absence) and its effects.

Lach is a New Yorker and established the Antifolk music and arts movement in the eighties. This was a reaction to the remnants of the folk music of the sixties. He has been credited a a key influence on artists such as Beck, Regina Spektor and Suzanne Vega. He will appear at a concert at Sneaky Pete’s on 25 April along with Martin Metcalfe of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. This is a free but ticketed event. Tickets here.

Listen to his back catalogue at www.lach.bandcamp.com 

He came to Edinburgh in the early years of the 21st century to bring his comedy to the Fringe. He went on to perform at The Stand, Gilded Balloon and Voodoo Rooms before touring the UK with his one man show. His monologue series The Lach Chronicles became a three part BBC Radio 4 hit listed as a top pick in every major UK paper.

Langdimania is published on 6 April in paperback (£8.99) by The Book Whisperers, available through Amazon.