Excerpt from Porcupines by Fran Fabriczki, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Part 1

Los Angeles, 1996

What Mila's mother tells her on the first day of school is different from what other mothers of children at Mount Washington Elementary School are saying at the very same time to their very own six-year-old children. This is almost certainly a fact. But it is not for Mila to know the difference. That will come later: at bars while forming new intimacies over tepid beer; at her therapist's office, divulging childhood stories with little prompting; or perhaps in self-serious short stories sagging with the weight of too many metaphors. For now, though, she is unaware of any oddity in her mother's behaviour. Sonia leans down and holds Mila's shoulders as though afraid she might fall back wards from the burden of her backpack (a not entirely unfounded fear—children's backpacks never do seem proportionate to their small frames).

She looks Mila in the eye and says, "Now, remember, Mila, we live about a five-minute drive away, your mother works at an office, and you're not Russian, your mother just liked the sound of your name."

Mila nods vigorously—a model pupil, for now, at least.

"Any follow-up questions, then what do we say?"

"Mind your own business."

"That's right."

Sonia straightens up and takes out a mirror from the little purse hanging on her shoulder. She refreshes her lipstick with a satisfied smack and kisses Mila's left cheek, leaving a perfectly formed imprint of herself on the child.

And so begins Mila's instruction—or indoctrination, perhaps—in the American way of life. Soon she will be made aware of the market economy of the playground, where her measly Lunchables will provide paltry currency; she will realise the income inequality inherent in one's possession or lack of crayons that smell of fruits; and, most important, she will come to understand that her place in the pecking order of this society in miniature was long decided by the mothers and fathers who dropped off their children at the gate and eyed Sonia with suspicion as she made her way to her car trailing the scent of lemongrass and foreignness.

Budapest, 1989

The first time it occurred to Szonja to go to the United States, tears streamed down her face while George H. W. Bush made a speech. It was July, and she was watching him on a small grey television set in her parents' living room in the suburbs of Budapest.

"What in the world is so funny?" her father asked her, but Szonja's breaths were coming in small hiccoughs as her shoulders shook—she tried to subdue her mirth, but it was proving to be obstinate. She knew he would work himself up into a sullen anger if she continued for long—her father did have a sense of humour, but it was mostly revealed in the moments immediately following his own witticisms—and yet she couldn't help it.

The president of the United States had just arrived in Budapest and come straight to Kossuth Square to speak in front of a crowd that had awaited him patiently in the rain, their reward being the first glimpse of the American man. For him, this was a flyover visit, hastily tacked onto a more important one to Poland; for them, it was a sign of change, a little shard of light bouncing off a single sequin that made up the glittering West. For Szonja, it was the entertainment on a humid summer night, her only options being a half-hearted night out with friends or stewing in the quiet frustration of her parents' waning marriage.

Szonja's father was a retired diplomat, something she would eventually learn not to mention to new acquaintances—it created some confusion. The word diplomat arouses ideas of a glamorous cosmopolitanism in the minds of people outside the Eastern Bloc, and no amount of insistence that a diplomat in socialist Hungary could be an ordinary government position, underpaid and tedious like any other, will disabuse them of the notion. It was true that the Imre children were rich in education and experience, having lived in five different countries within fifteen years, but it was also true that when they returned home to Budapest, the money saved from a government salary over these years amounted only to a small de posit on a two-bed flat in the suburbs. Which is where Szonja still resided at the age of eighteen, recently released from the clutches of an indifferent high-school education, working odd jobs and saving up for a revolving door of life-changing schemes, all yet to be actualized.

Excerpted from Porcupines by Fran Fabriczki. Copyright © 2026 by Fran Fabriczki. Excerpted by permission of Summit Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.