The Essay: Walk with Amal

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The Essay: Walk with Amal: A Piece of Cake, by Nicolas Ancion

Walk with Amal

A Piece of Cake, by Nicolas Ancion

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Walk with Amal, A Piece of Cake, by Nicolas Ancion

Nicolas Ancion's story finds puppet refugee Little Amal facing kidnap in Belgium.

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

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.

A Piece of Cake by Nicolas Ancion catches up with the puppet in Belgium where two young men try to kidnap it to raise awareness of the death of a Kurdish child shot by a policeman, only to be abducted themselves by a group who want to give Amal a special Belgian welcome. 

Nicolas Ancion is a novelist and scriptwriter who grew up in a puppet theater in Liege, Belgium. His work has been translated into a dozen languages and awarded several literary prizes. His novel “The Man Who Refused To Die” is published by Dis Voir 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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