The Wire-Walker

Regal House Titles
$20.95 - $30.95
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SKU:
TWW25

Expected release date is 23rd Sep 2025

In the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus, Palestine, sixteen-year-old Amal Tuqan finds her escape in tightrope walking. Living in an alley so narrow that “the walls hold their breath,” she practices tirelessly on thin wires and slippery rebar. Her extraordinary talent leads her to Tel Aviv in the summer of 2019, where she joins The Flying Kids, a circus that brings together Israeli and Palestinian children.
There, she forms a deep friendship with Tali Glazman, a Jewish Israeli juggler, and they discover they share a painful bond: both have lost their fathers to violence. As their friendship defies the deep-seated animosities that divide them, The Wire-Walker reveals more than just a tale of friendship; it is a raw and powerful commentary on the daily struggles faced by Amal and her community in the occupied West Bank.
Set against the backdrop of 2019-2020, this poignant tale serves as a prequel to the struggles that have unfolded since, highlighting the enduring spirit of youth amidst conflict.

Praise for The Wire-Walker

“James Janko is a marvelous writer whose compassionate imagination spans worlds. The wire he walks on trembles with humanity and hope—it is not strung only between two peoples, but between all of us who care about justice in the wider world and safety for all human beings. His interest in the circus projects between Palestinian/Israeli communities, his willingness to listen, his gifts of description, render him a mesmerizing ringleader under the Big Top. This humane story of love, care, and dreaming could not be more timely.”

— Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Habibi and recipient of the 2024 Wallace Stevens Award

“From the descriptions of every-day actions and thoughts to life-changing and tragic events, the novel is both magical and honest. As a Palestinian from Nablus, I appreciate the accuracy of the setting, plot and characters specifically, and more generally the way the occupation affects the lives of Palestinians, especially refugees, both directly and indirectly. It’s clear that the author has fully absorbed both facts and feelings related to Palestinians and the occupation and through empathy and imagination woven a most wondrous story.”

— Mahmoud Masri, Founder of the (actual) Nablus Circus School

“Amal [the narrator of The Wire-Walker] is Palestine’s Anne Frank. Her presence in the world will make it better…The ending is breath-taking.”

—Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

“When one is practically forbidden to support Palestine or to challenge the violence descending into genocide against Palestinians, or when the Israel war machine urges us to ignore Palestine’s existence, Golda Meir, 1969, ‘There is no such thing as Palestinians,’ James Janko dares to introduce us to a luminous sixteen-year-old Palestinian wire walker living a courageous and compassionate life in a refugee camp in the West Bank under siege every day by the IDF. Creation means, bringing to life, and indeed these characters, particularly Amal Tuqan, are living, vital and wise and will be with the reader, as fine literature makes possible, for all time. May I dare to confirm, as the novel implies, that Amal Tuqan and Anne Frank would be companions of the heart if they had known each other? Here I am speaking of Amal as if she is alive, because she is. We must read this book so we understand the horrific, violent nature of the war against the Palestinians, and also the possibilities of alliances as lived through the circus, the Flying Kids of Tel Aviv. A character came to James Janko and he has the gift, heart and will to listen and tell her story and so we have this extraordinary work of literature and truth telling and vision.”

—Deena Metzger, author of What Dinah Thought, The Other Hand, and La Negra y Blanca, winner of Oakland Pen Award for Literature

“A poetic combination of beauty and horror, disillusionment and hope. This novel provides an unforgettable perspective to a centuries-old conflict. I hope to read more novels from this author, a singular voice, a remarkable talent.”

—Gabriel Bump, author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong

The Wire-Walker is so moving and the flow so good, I had a hard time putting it down. Janko did an absolutely amazing job as a writer.”

— Nili Belkind, Jaffa, Israel, ethnomusicologist and author of Music in Conflict: Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Aesthetic Production

“In The Wire-Walker, James Janko has found the perfect image to describe life in the refugee camps of the occupied West Bank, a life suspended with narrow balance above the land the Palestinians don’t quite own. Janko has also found the pitch-perfect voice of a teenage Palestinian girl, Amal, to narrate the story. His research comes across, in Amal’s voice, as lived experience. It is her voice that draws the reader in from the start, her voice that puts into the reader’s heart a longing to see her set free, like 'a bird with strong wings,' to traverse without fear the land of Israel/Palestine. Janko’s book makes a strong contribution to the trove of literature that has tried to come to terms with the seemingly eternal conflict of a troubled land. It is a powerful book, by turns warm and wrenching.”

— Charles Hansmann, author of Skylighting