From page to screen: A comparative analysis of Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun and Tawfiq Saleh's The Dupes

This paper examines the adaptation of Kanafani's seminal novella Men in the Sun into Saleh's The Dupes (also known as The Duped and The Deceived ). It explores how this transformation walks the line between literary symbolism and cinematic realism, all while preserving the work's profound political critique. The significance of this case study transcends aesthetic considerations to encompass broader questions about how narratives of Palestinian identity, displacement, and exile translate across media in the context of the Arab cinema's evolution. Transforming Kanafani's sparse, symbolically dense prose into Saleh's visually expansive cinematic interpretation raises fundamental questions about fidelity, creative transformation, and the role of adaptation in shaping collective memory.