From page to screen: five works based on literature in Ramadan 2025
A novel about Riyadh in the 1970s, the memoirs of an Egyptian pickpocket, and a Syrian play that waited more than twenty years: how did literary texts return to drama?
Cultural article · Mashhad editorial team · 4 November 2026
The Ramadan 2025 season saw several works based on written texts. The most prominent in the Gulf was “Sharie Al Asha”, based on the novel “Gharamiyat Share' Al-Asha” by Badriah Albeshr, set in a working-class Riyadh neighborhood during the 1970s, which reached the longlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014.
From Egypt came “Shabab Emraa”, based on the 1952 novel by Amin Youssef Ghorab, which had already been made into a film in 1956 directed by Salah Abu Seif.
“Mozakerat Nashal” drew on the memoirs of the pickpocket Abdel Aziz El-Nass, written by Hosni Youssef in the 1920s in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, with Ahmed Amin in the lead role.
From Syria, “Al-Batal” was based on the play “Ziyarat Al-Malika” by Mamdouh Adwan. Director Al-Laith Hajjo began preparing it in 2003, the project stopped after Adwan's death in 2004, and it later came back to life.
The second part of “Gouder” drew inspiration from the world of “One Thousand and One Nights”, rather than relying on a single novel.
Sources: Al Majalla
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