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Porcupines
  • Published: 14 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241741689
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99

Porcupines

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
14 July 2026
Audiobook
16 Apr 2026
Hardback
16 May 2026
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Curtis Sittenfeld meets Katherine Heiny in this irresistible debut about mothers and daughters, the things we carry with us, and those we leave behind

Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is raising her daughter, Mila, alone in the sunny but somnolent suburbs of LA. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, avoiding other moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum: minor mistakes that nevertheless remind her she doesn’t belong.

Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school – all the while trying to get her mother to share something, anything, about her past.

But there are just too many things that Mila doesn’t know:

  • She doesn’t know that her mother grew up in Soviet Hungary (where getting your hands on a banana was one of the greatest thrills in life)
  • She doesn’t know that her mother has a sister called Rina (whom she hasn’t spoken to in 10 years)
  • The only thing she does know about her father is that he was a ‘good time’ (according to her mother)
  • Crucially, she doesn’t know that there is a very good reason why her mother dodges everyone, from traffic cops to vice principals.

So, Mila concocts a scheme to get her mother, and the man Mila is kind of sure must be her father to reconnect. It involves corralling Sonia into chaperoning an orchestra of ten-year-olds (most of whom seem to be called Megan) on a road trip from LA to San Francisco, and it may just cause their carefully constructed lives to implode.

Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington, DC in the tense years of the Cold War and the bright sunshine of early 2000s Los Angeles, Porcupines is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, belonging and reinvention, the things we carry with us, and those we tell ourselves we’ve left behind.
  • Published: 14 July 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241741689
  • Imprint: Fig Tree
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99
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About the author

Fran Fabriczki

Fran Fabriczki was born in Budapest. She has lived in Los Angeles and currently lives in London. She read English at the University of Cambridge and worked in publishing for several years before going freelance to focus on her own writing. She graduated from the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA in 2022 and received the Curtis Brown Award for her dissertation. Porcupines is her upcoming debut novel.
FF

Praise for Porcupines

Destined to become an instant classic. Richly drawn characters in an immigrant journey as old as America herself

Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The View From Lake Como

Porcupines manages the rarest of things: depicting beautifully complex characters, while simultaneously providing a deeply comforting world. The best debut I’ve read this year

Grace Murray, author of Blank Canvas

Funny, acerbic, and wonderfully playful, Porcupines is a brilliant, cross-generational portrait of an immigrant family constantly assailed by whether they are American enough, Hungarian enough or Jewish enough. It's completely delicious: a novel to sink into

Naomi Wood, author of Mrs. Hemingway

Perfect for Elif Batuman fans, this is a wonderfully warm, witty read about mothers and daughters, sisters and lovers, migration and belonging, and what it truly means to feel at home. I loved it

Julianne Pachico, author of The Jungle House

An acutely and deftly told story of family … Wise, emotive and funny, Fran Fabriczki is a beautiful writer who writes sisterhood and motherhood so well I felt like could reach out and touch her characters

Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us

A haunting, funny and compulsively readable novel about the intricacies of family, loss and trust

Chloe Caldwell, author of Women

If Gilmore Girls had sharper edges and came with a Los Angeles sunburn, you’d have this riveting novel, a love letter to kids who are done keeping their parents’ secrets

Courtney Maum, author of I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You

A really accomplished debut. Sharp and funny as hell

Chris Power, author of A Lonely Man

Sonia and her daughter Mila are wonderfully funny, unpredictable forces in this sharp, witty take on the American dream and the persistence of Old Europe

Andrew Cowan, author of PIg

A first novel that sparkles with wit, wisdom and compassion

Daniel Tammet, author of Nine Minds

A dazzling mother-daughter story, Porcupines shows us the softness that lies beneath the spikes

Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

Fabriczki’s writing brings to mind the humour and pathos of Andrew Sean Greer and Maria Semple, but it is also utterly fresh and original ... so elegant and assured I was astonished it is a debut

Lisa Owens, author of Natural Disaster

Deliciously vivid ... Taut, funny, and poignant; a tremendous debut.

Kirkus Review

Heralds the arrival of an ambitious writer ... a funny, amusing, clever story of migration

Vogue