The Prophet
by Khalil Gibran
Buy on AmazonThe 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.
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"This is a very poetic book. It’s a series of 26 philosophical essays tackling lots of different issues. It’s basically about the chosen one, called Al-mustafa, and people come to him and ask him questions about love, marriage, and children – really the whole spectrum of life’s issues. And he shares his pearls of wisdom with these people. It is a really fascinating, beautifully written book. It is very profound and transcends religion. [donation] It doesn’t really matter what your religious background is when you are reading this. In a way, what it shows is that, despite religion , we all have a lot in common and there are basic human truths that we should all aspire to. All sorts of people, from teachers to hermits to poets, ask him different questions. So, for example, someone asks him about marriage, and I remember this in particular, because when I got married I was looking for a reading that I could use at one of my ceremonies and I found this from The Prophet. Yes, it is a very Sufi-inspired book, so this is the esoteric, mystical side of Islam. But, I wouldn’t say that the book is specifically Islamic , even though it is set against that background. It transcends that."
Islam · fivebooks.com