“With brilliant descriptive power and human warmth, Sharlene Wen-Ning Teo summons the darker currents of modernity – environmental degradation, the suffocating allure of the sparkling modern city and its cataracts of commodities and corrupted language. Against this, her characters glow with life and humour and minutely observed desperation. I read this extract longing for more.” –Ian McEwan, author of The Children Act and Atonement
“This haunting debut hopscotches between decades and cultures, eschewing the usual moves of the coming-of-age story for something truer to the desperate, surreal stakes of adolescence. Sharlene Teo is a daring and genuinely original novelist.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
"A radiant, achingly beautiful novel about relationships between women." —Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From
"Ponti is darkly hilarious. It offers up all the anxiety, snark, sadness, and wonder of being a teenager. Teo guides us through the grunge of growing up. She asks what it means to be a monster and what it means to be beautiful. Is it possible to be both?" —Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You
“Witty, moving and richly evocative, Ponti paints a portrait of a country and a people negotiating the throes of modernity. It also announces a major talent — Sharlene Teo has produced not just a singular debut, but a milestone in South East Asian literature.” —Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
“Sensuous . . . The Singapore in Sharlene Teo’s Ponti is vivid and immediate, its people complex, beautifully sketched and captivating.” —The Times Literary Supplement
"Everything about Ponti suggests it’s the rare, real deal and Teo’s a writer we’ll be reading for many years to come.” —Financial Times
“At once a subtle critique of the pressures of living in a modern Asian metropolis; a record of the swiftness and ruthlessness with which Southeast Asia has changed over the last three decades; a portrait of the old juxtaposed with the new (and an accompanying dialogue between nostalgia and cynicism); an exploration of the relationship between women against the backdrop of social change; and, occasionally, a love story—all wrapped up in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age novel. . . . Teo is brilliant.” —The Guardian
