In this corner, we celebrate a group of our most prominent creators who provided aesthetic and entertaining literary touches, enriched the conscience, raised the taste of readers, gave us food that expressed the achievements of the homeland, the transformations of society and human concerns. Which guide us in the paths of life.
“I hope to leave what deserves to be read and benefit future generations.” This is some of what the Emirati novelist and storyteller Nadia Al-Najjar said and believed. The writer, and the reader actually hints at the serious work that searches for difference, and Al-Najjar always draws her topics from the environment that she sees as responsible for shaping the conscience of the creator and his intellectual and aesthetic trends. and his acquaintances and friends, and I think that all these factors influence the formation of the features of the writer inside me.”
passion
From a young age, Al-Najjar was very fond of reading, and visiting the book fair was a dream that the little girl lived through every year. She says regarding this: “I was imagining the characters of the stories, and changing some of the endings and plots, and from here I started writing and I do not remember the stories I wrote, but they were simple and childish, but I remember that I once wrote a text and sent it to Majid magazine, and I found it weeks later, published between its pages, and those It was my first experience in publishing and it remained stuck in the memory.” Hence, Al-Najjar’s relationship with writing in the field of literature began.
beginnings
Although Al-Najjar is one of the well-known female novelists in the Emirates, she did not expect to become a writer despite her passion for reading, literature and writing since childhood. During her university studies, she specialized in a scientific field that does not belong to literature, which is computer science. The love of reading remained with her, as well as writing thoughts. After graduating, she wrote her first novel, entitled “Exile of Memory”, and it was published in 2013, and it talks regarding a woman who went through difficult circumstances in her life, so she decided one day, to write down her memories and save them in an electronic file called “Exile of Memory” ».
reading threshold
While working on the novel “Exile of Memory”, Al-Najjar was preoccupied with the details of another work, entitled “Cities of Al-Hanfa”, which won first place in the Emirates Fiction Award for the short novel category in 2015. Therefore, it can be said that reading was the main threshold. Which led Al-Najjar to the realms of narration, which made her insist on the importance of reading and reading for the book. She says: “The author, the novelist, the storyteller, and whoever works in the field of creative writing should read various knowledge, and all literary genres, I read poetry, novel and story and study history, heritage, philosophy and politics. And my library is not without it, but of course the novel remains on my reading list.” And this rich experience led her to pay attention to many techniques and narrative methods, as well as interest in building heroes and characters that are stuck in the memory of the recipient.
triple signifier
Since the publication of her first and second novels, Al-Najjar has worked on developing herself, her style and refining her experience, and following more than two years of continuous research and writing, she published her novel “The Dal Trilogy”, which is a different narrative work and indicates the maturity of the experience and tools of the writer, and that novel is inspired by A true story that took place in the Emirates, and in the Emirate of Dubai in particular, where Al-Najjar dealt in the novel with the burning and sinking of the ship “Dara”, which took place in “Dubai” more than 50 years ago, specifically on the eighth of April 1961, before its scheduled trip to India, Al-Najjar had stated that she had seen an article regarding the incident in a local newspaper, and the details she had seen were the motive that motivated her to write the events differently.
fancy details
That story stuck in the carpenter’s mind and incited her to practice writing, and she says: “That incident was a human tragedy that the people of the Emirates and the residents of the Gulf experienced more than half a century ago, and it is still being narrated to the children to this day, and since I read an article regarding it years ago in a local newspaper, The details of the shipwreck and the stories of the survivors remained stuck in my mind, and I imagined that I would write regarding it one day, and this is what happened, so I was inspired by that incident, but with characters that have nothing to do with reality. The temporal as well as the type of narrator, these three parts begin with the letter D, which are Dara, Dana, Dubai, and the first part deals with the burning and sinking of the ship, which was carrying regarding 690 passengers and 132 crew members, while the number of victims in the accident reached 238 people, while the second and third parts, Viroyan the fates of the survivors, and how that disaster affected their lives and changed them. Al-Najjar always points out that writing regarding a real event is a documentation of it, as this novel found great resonance, and won the Sharjah Book Fair Award for the best Emirati book, and it has been translated into several languages.
short story
Following the publication of her novels, Al-Najjar published a collection entitled “The Puzzle Game”, which includes short and very short stories; Many find it strange; That is, start with the novel and then write the story, but Al-Najjar does not see this as it is, as it confirms the difference between the sexes, the novel has its own techniques as well as the story of various kinds.
children’s literature
Al-Najjar also experimented with writing for children, and was able to produce many books and fictional works in this field. “Voices of the World” was awarded the Al Owais Prize, while her other story, “The Spotted Tiger”, was included in the Arabic language curriculum in the UAE, and the story “My Strange Walk with Uncle Salem” was selected in the short list of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
light
Nadia Al-Najjar obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Ajman University of Science and Technology. She has several publications in the field of novels, short stories and children’s literature. She has also received many awards, including: “Sharjah Book Fair” award, “Emirates Fiction Award” and “Emirates Fiction Award” Al Owais” and the “Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Mansour” award.
