Podcast from Abu Dhabi - Hall 8
In this episode, we delve into the intricate relationship between literature and streaming platform dramas. How do novels transform into screenplays? Does the screen do justice to the literary text, or does it reshape it entirely? We explore examples of literary works adapted into dramas on platforms like Netflix and Shahid, and discuss how these adaptations influence the audience’s reception of the original text.
We also shed light on the shifting tastes of the general public under the dominance of digital drama, and the challenges authors face when their work is reinterpreted through visual storytelling. Are we witnessing a new wave of “screen literature”? What does literature gain from this relationship—and what might it lose?
Join us on an intellectual journey through word and image, where literary imagination intersects with the world of modern drama.
Author
Noura Naji is an Egyptian writer and journalist born in Tanta in 1987. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts (Interior Design, 2008), she began her career in design before shifting to journalism, focusing on women’s issues, fashion, and cultural events.
Her literary debut came with Bana (2014), followed by The Wall (2016). Her novel Pasha’s Daughters (2017) was shortlisted for the Sawiris Cultural Award in 2018. In 2020, she published Camellia’s Ghosts, which won the inaugural Yehia Haqqi Award in 2021. She also authored Writers and Solitude (2020), the short story collection Like Naive Films (2022)—which won Egypt’s State Encouragement Award in Literature (2023)—as well as the novels Years of Running in Place and Jazz House.
Naji's work centers on women’s experiences, and she dedicates all her writings to her daughter Fatima, saying she writes because of and for her. In 2023, Pasha’s Daughters was announced for a film adaptation with El Adl Group.