Introduction

The prophet Almustafa has lived twelve years in the city of Orphalese, waiting for the ship that will carry him back to his homeland. In the twelfth year, in September, the ship at last comes. The whole city comes out to see him off and begs him, before he goes, to leave them his wisdom. And so a seeress, a ploughman, a mother, a rich man, a judge, a teacher and others ask him in turn, and he speaks of 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, beauty, religion and death. 'Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.' Gibran spent more than twenty years shaping these prose poems, illustrated with his own drawings; translated into more than a hundred languages, the book has never stopped selling.