The Emirati and Polish novels meet in story, memory, and history "Warsaw Book"
Warsaw, 31st May / WAM / Sharjah’s participation as guest of honor at the fifth edition of the Warsaw International Book Fair 2026 opened the door to the cultural and creative commonalities between the Emirati and Polish narrative experiences, as the emirate’s pavilion at the exhibition hosted a dialogue session entitled “The Art of Storytelling through Narrative Experiences from the Emirates and Poland,” during which the Emirati writer Saliha Ghabish and the Polish novelist Albina Grabowska spoke.
The session formed a space for exchanging visions about novel writing, the relationship of narrative to memory, history, and place, the role of translation in crossing texts between cultures, and how local stories rooted in the details of daily life are transformed into texts capable of reaching a reader who is geographically distant and humanly close.
In a dialogue session entitled “Historical and Human Diversity in the Emirati and Polish Novel,” the Emirati poet and novelist Dhaen Shaheen and the Polish novelist Wit Szostak revealed how the novel turns into a space for preserving individual and collective memory and rereading history as a living human experience that transcends the boundaries of place and connects man and his social and cultural transformations through narrative, stressing that culture represents one of the most important bridges that connect peoples together.
They pointed out that literature, the novel, the story, and historical and cultural studies all constitute a common knowledge and humanitarian container that opens the way for cultural and social communication between different societies.
The Sharjah event, the guest of honor of the fifth edition of the Warsaw International Book Fair 2026, took the exhibition audience to the present and future of children’s literature in the United Arab Emirates and Poland.
The emirate’s pavilion hosted Emirati writer Nadia Al Najjar and Polish writer Barbara Kosmoska in a dialogue session entitled “Between Innovation and Renewal,” which addressed recent transformations in children’s literature, questions of writing for new generations, and the contemporary child’s relationship with books in a rapidly changing world led by technology, images, and digital platforms.
Nadia Al-Najjar said that writing for children begins with truly approaching their world and understanding their interests and different age stages, noting that each age group has its own language and different interests, from early childhood to adolescence.
She pointed out that the biggest challenge facing children’s writers today is to find a new idea capable of attracting the child and making him leave the digital devices and screens in his hands and turn to the book, stressing that this question has become one of the most difficult questions in writing for children in light of the density of visual and technological distractions surrounding them.
Barbara Kosmoska believed that the challenges facing children’s literature in Poland today greatly intersect with what Nadia Al-Najjar proposed, stressing that the book is no longer the primary medium in children’s lives as it was previously in light of children’s early attraction to technology and screens.
She said that today’s writers are not only trying to gain the child’s interest, but they are also seeking to reach the parents, because they are the first introduction to the world of reading and stories.
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