Malhamat al-Harafishملحمة الحرافيش

This is Naguib Mahfouz’s greatest and most significant epic, portraying the human soul torn between the quest for salvation and the pursuit of worldly pleasures. It comprises ten tales teeming with the conflict, sweetness, and temptations of life, featuring the descendants of "Al-Nagi Al-Kabir" (The Great Survivor). Each acts as a reformer seeking justice and goodness in their own way, standing against oppression while grappling with temptation and the inner impulses of the human spirit. They fall and triumph, corrupt and redeem, in a breathtaking saga spanning two centuries—from the era of Al-Nagi Al-Kabir to that of Ashour Al-Nagi, the last of the line. Published in 1977, the novel’s stories were adapted for the cinema six times during the 1980s and later for television in 2002.