Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American poet and visual artist whose The Prophet — a collection of poetic essays on love, work, children, and death — has been translated into over a hundred languages and has never gone out of print since 1923.

Kahlil Gibran was born in the Ottoman province of Mount Lebanon, emigrated to the United States at twelve, studied art in Paris, and wrote in both Arabic and English. He published The Prophet in 1923 — a book structured as the farewell address of a wise man named Almustafa, departing from the city he has lived in for twelve years, who delivers twenty-six prose poems on subjects including love, marriage, children, work, joy, sorrow, and death.

The Prophet has never been out of print and has been translated into over a hundred languages, making it one of the best-selling books in literary history. Its appeal is its tone: the poetry is accessible without being simple, the wisdom is specific without being doctrinaire, and the prose has a cadence that rewards reading aloud. At its best — the sections on children, on work, on joy and sorrow — it achieves something genuinely moving. At its most familiar, it has become the standard text for weddings and funerals.

Gibran was a significant figure in both Arab-American literary culture and the early twentieth-century mystical tradition that bridged Eastern and Western spirituality. His visual art — he was also a painter — shows the same commitment to expressive intensity. The Prophet is the overwhelming center of his reputation, but his Arabic-language work, including The Broken Wings and Spirits Rebellious, is considered important in the history of Arabic literature. He died in New York in 1931 at forty-seven of cirrhosis and tuberculosis.