James Janko
81
James Janko's Novels
Novelist, Poet, Veteran | Author of ‘The Clubhouse Thief’ and ‘What We Don’t Talk About’ | New book ‘The Wire-Walker’ out September 23, 2025
Forward Review: "The Wire-Walker is an aching, heartbreaking novel about a girl whose sky-high dreams cannot be contained."![]()
––MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER![]()
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Full text of the review:![]()
"In James Janko’s searing novel The Wire-Walker, a talented Palestinian girl defies the limitations of her home to![]()
declare “watch for me in the sky.”![]()
Amal, raised in a West Bank refugee camp, grows up with few joys: a peek of sky, love from her grandfather and mother, a purring cat, and her aspirations toward the circus. She practices wire-walking for six hours a day, posting her feats on the internet.![]()
When Tali, a Tel Aviv juggler, comes upon Amal’s blog, the girls start a friendship pocked by generational pains. Still, Tali helps Amal come to Israel to perform with the Israeli and Palestinian children of the Flying Kids circus. There Amal learns that the stories she made up about the world beyond the camp were partial truths: In Israel and Palestine, everyone has lost someone, and there is no such thing as a safe city. Though raised to regard Israelis as uniform enemies, Amal comes to love those she meets through the circus, including Tali’s mournful mother; Jonathan, a former soldier and performance artist; and her fellow circus performers.![]()
But the violence brewing in Nablus narrows her world once more when Amal spots a foreboding package beneath her![]()
twin Issam’s bed. Amal is a defiant heroine who declares “I will walk till I die and love who I can”—positioning her against Issam, whom she worries has never loved anyone. Driven by compassion but resentful of the privations forced on the camp, she yearns to “walk among ghosts on a thread … and weave things together.” And though saving her family lands her in detention and shuts her off from her Israeli friends forever, she determines never to stop walking on the barrels of tanks.![]()
The Wire-Walker is an aching, heartbreaking novel about a girl whose sky-high dreams cannot be contained."![]()
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (September / October 2025)
During the Nakba, or Catastrophe of 1948, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. In the Nakba’s aftermath, Avot Yeshurun, an Israeli poet who lost his family in the Holocaust, wrote: “The Holocaust of the Jews of Europe and the Holocaust of the Arabs of Eretz Israel are one Holocaust...The two of them stare each other directly in the face.”![]()
And this one Holocaust continues. The first photo was taken in Palestine in 1948; the second in Gaza, in 2025.![]()
Seven million Palestinians and seven million Jewish Israelis live on a small strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. If justice succeeds, peace will follow. The only possible solution is collective liberation for all people between the river and the sea. At present, the Israeli government, with U.S. backing, has no interest in justice or peace. Author Deena Metzger points out that we need to go beyond traditional politics. “We have to create the life and the ways together that we have asked government to provide for us. The way the people lived before the colonial mind took over. We can create sanctuary for each other and for all beings. We can because we must.”![]()
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Photo credits: The Nakba, 1948, Mr. Hanini; Gaza, 2025, Jaber Badwen.
"I wonder if I will ever be ready to die. I’m glad I’m a girl because most of our martyrs are young men, or boys a few years older than me. I enjoy being alive even on mornings when I can do nothing but sip coffee that burns my stomach. I would like to trade in my body for an iron one, a thick shell, or a body of light that neither bullets nor coffee can harm. Now I think light would be better than iron, far better. Iron can be melted, crushed, broken. Or die in a pile of rust. Light is beautiful. Light is difficult to harm."![]()
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—Amal Tuqan, in The Wire-Walker, by James Janko (forthcoming Sept. 2025)![]()
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@RegalPublishingHouse![]()
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#TheWireWalker #JamesJanko #AmalTuqan #Palestine #FictionNovels #Heartwarming
"Issam, my twin brother, leaves the room he shares with our grandfather and slouches in the doorway to the alley. How long will he live, my brother? Unlike me, Issam is unafraid to die. There are many like him, boys too angry to be afraid. Why are they so sure that death leads to heaven, to gardens watered by streams, to the end of hunger, thirst, and all suffering? I haven’t visited heaven, nor have they. What will we see when we die? We all wish to believe in something beautiful that never ends, but what will we see?"![]()
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—Amal Tuqan, in The Wire-Walker, by James Janko (forthcoming Sept. 2025)![]()
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@RegalPublishingHouse![]()
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#TheWireWalker #JamesJanko #AmalTuqan #Palestine #FictionNovels #Heartwarming
"I picture myself walking on a wire over our roofs, and up through the sky where the planes flew. Will they return? Will the sky remain quiet the rest of the day? Our prayers are often simple: Sky, be quiet. Please be quiet. Stay quiet. Mercy. Inshallah. None of us know what will happen in the sky or on earth. We are here, we are alive. Our day has begun."![]()
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—Amal Tuqan, in The Wire-Walker, by James Janko (forthcoming Sept. 2025)![]()
![]()
@RegalHousePublishing![]()
![]()
#TheWireWalker #JamesJanko #AmalTuqan #Palestine #FictionNovels #Heartwarming