The Essay: Walk with Amal

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The Essay: Walk with Amal: Hide and Seek, by Lorenza Pieri

Walk with Amal

Hide and Seek, by Lorenza Pieri

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Walk with Amal, Hide and Seek, by Lorenza Pieri

Lorenza Pieri re-imagines puppet refugee Little Amal's visit to Italy.

As the puppet Little Amal walks across Europe to reflect the journey made by many child refugees, five European writers respond in fiction. Lorenza Pieri re-imagines her in Italy.

Little Amal is a 3.5m high puppet who has been walking nearly 9000 kilometres across Europe this summer in recognition of the journey made by thousands of child refugees every year in search of family members, safety and a new home. To mark this extraordinary project, five award-winning European writers have written short stories inspired by Amal’s walk. Each one has responded imaginatively to the puppet’s journey through their own country, reflecting the hopes and fears of both Amal herself and the people she encounters on her way. 

As she strides through the stories and across Europe, Amal takes on many guises. She’s a refugee child from a camp on the Turkish Syrian border, who sets off in search of her mother, accompanied by an alter-ego puppet guide; she’s befriended by a seagull in Greece; she strikes fear into the heart of a small, lonely boy in Italy; becomes the target for a kidnapping in Belgium… 

The Walk has been created by Good Chance Theatre, who started the theatre in the Calais Jungle and Handspring Puppet company, who created the puppets for War Horse. Little Amal began her walk in Turkey at the end of July and, helped by a team of puppeteers, performers, local people and arts organisations, she’ll walk nearly 9000km  across Europe, finishing in Manchester in November. She arrives in the UK, at Folkestone, on 19 October.

Hide and Seek by Lorenza Pieri is set in Genazzano, near Rome, where the children of the town are playing games to welcome Little Amal on her journey through Italy. But for Daniel, hiding on the steps to the castle to avoid being found and caught by the other children and their huge, terrifying visitor, the game threatens to be another humiliation in a long line. 

Lorenza Pieri is a novelist, journalist and literary translator. Her first novel to appear in English, The Garden of Monsters, is published by Europa Editions.


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Five commissioned short stories from Europe marking a refugee puppet's astonishing journey

As the puppet Little Amal walks across Europe to reflect the journey made by many child refugees, five European writers respond in fiction.

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Hide and Seek, by Lorenza Pieri

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