A prophet named Almustafa has waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for the ship that will carry him home. On the morning it finally comes, the people who watched him live among them gather at the gate and ask him to speak before he goes.
What he tells them runs to twenty-eight short sections and leaves almost nothing out. Love, marriage, children, giving, 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 last of all death.
Gibran was a Lebanese immigrant writing in English, which was not his first language. He published it in 1923, watched the critics look past it, and lived to see it sell anyway. It has not been out of print since.
It does not argue and it does not preach. It states, one line at a time, and leaves you to carry what you take.
This is the Civil Savage Society edition of the complete 1923 text, newly typeset in a 6 by 9 inch US Trade format, 70 pages. Gibran drew twelve plates for the first edition and chose where each one fell. Those positions are kept here, with twelve new ink plates set to the lines they stand beside.
Paperback: perfect bound on cream stock. A workhorse copy, meant to be carried, dog-eared, and marked up.
Hardcover: casewrap edition built for the shelf and the long haul.
E-Book: instant download, delivered to your email at purchase.
Print editions are produced on demand. Nothing warehoused, never out of print.
