Ponti

'Remarkable' – Ian McEwanShortlisted for Hearsts' Big Book Award 2018.Set in 2003 in the sweltering heat of Singapore, Sharlene Teo's Ponti begins as sixteen-year-olds Szu and Circe develop an intense friendship. For Szu it offers an escape from Amisa, her beautiful, cruel mother – once an actress, and now the silent occupant of a rusty house. But for Circe, their friendship does the opposite, bringing her one step closer to the fascinating, unknowable Amisa.Seventeen years later, Circe finds herself adrift and alone. And then a project comes up at work, a remake of the cult seventies horror film series ‘Ponti’, the same series that defined Amisa’s short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a lost friendship that threatens her conscience . . .Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2019.Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Fiction, with a Sense of Place Award.

Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

“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.”

Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

"A radiant, achingly beautiful novel about relationships between women."

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

"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?"

Sharlene Teo has produced not just a singular debut, but a milestone in South East Asian literature.”

“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

The Times Literary Supplement

“Sensuous . . . The Singapore in Sharlene Teo’s Ponti is vivid and immediate, its people complex, beautifully sketched and captivating.”

Financial Times

"Everything about Ponti suggests it’s the rare, real deal and Teo’s a writer we’ll be reading for many years to come.”

all wrapped up in the guise of a teenage coming-of-age novel. . . . Teo is brilliant.”

“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

From the Back Cover

Szu est une ado timide et mal dans sa peau. Elle vit recluse à Singapour avec sa mère, une ancienne star de films d'horreur devenus cultes, et sa tante. Quand elle rencontre Circé, à l'aise partout, jolie, brillante, c'est le coup de foudre et l'espoir pour elle d'échapper à l'étouffant huis clos familial. C'est aussi le début d'une amitié fusionnelle. Une vingtaine d'année plus tard, en pleine crise existentielle et sur le point de divorcer, Circé est confrontée, au hasard d'un projet professionnel, à cette passion adolescente oubliée, et les souvenirs reviennent, bouleversants. Alternant les points de vue et les époques, Ponti est un roman drôle, émouvant, original, qui nous plonge dans l'ambiance du Singapour contemporain.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ponti

About the Author

Sharlene Teo is a Singaporean writer based in the United Kingdom. She is the winner of the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers' Award for Ponti, her first novel. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Esquire UK, Magma Poetry, and Eunoia Review. She is the recipient of the 2013 David T. K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2014 Sozopol Fiction Fellowship.

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