The Prophet (book)

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The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923 by the Lebanese-American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. In the book, the prophet Almustafa who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. The book, Gibran's best known work, was followed by The Garden of The Prophet (published posthumously in 1933). Gibran was due to produce a third part when he died.^{[citation needed]}

Juliet Thompson, one of Khalil Gibran's acquaintances, said that Gibran told her that he thought of `Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith in his lifetime, all the way through writing The Prophet. `Abdu'l-Bahá's personage also influenced Jesus, The Son of Man, another book by Gibran.^[1]

The book's popularity among adherents of 1960s counterculture inspired a parody, The Profit by "Kehlog Albran." The tag line in "Albran's" book is: "He that has read this book and understood it should read no other."

[edit] Versions and interpretations

1960s The Profit by Kehlog Albran, a parody book. The title contains two puns; one relating to Kellogg's All-Bran breakfast cereal.
1974 The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: A Musical Interpretation featuring Richard Harris. Music composed by Arif Mardin, Atlantic Records
2007 Myriam of Lebanon - A lyrical philosophy of ambiance steadfastly established on Gibran Khalil Gibran's The Prophet by rural philosopher-poet Richard Mc Sweeney (Richard of Éire)