The Prophet

The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran. It is Gibran's best-known work, first published in 1923. The book follows the prophet Almustafa, who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship home. He is stopped by a group of people with whom he discusses topics such as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, 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.