Penguin Select Classics: The Prophet: (Original, Unabridged Classic)
"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises were oftentimes filled with your tears." When Almustafa, a figure of profound spiritual insight, arrives in the fictional city of Orphalese, the townspeople bring him their most private troubles. Here is a listener before whom you might confess jealousy, financial worry, the quiet grief of a difficult marriage, or a nagging sense that life has treated you unfairly, and feel no shame for it. That quality of non-judgement is, perhaps, the book's most disarming gift. Gibran structures the work as a series of exchanges between the prophet and the people he is about to leave behind. Together, they turn over the big subjects: spirituality, freedom, love, ambition, failure, success. The conversations feel neither preachy nor abstract. They feel honest. Reading it is a bit like sitting with a thoughtful friend who knows when to speak and when simply to sit with you. The prose is spare yet musical, and it carries a genuine sense of consolation. Not the hollow kind that papers over difficulty, but the sort that comes from feeling truly understood. For a short book, it carries considerable weight. A philosophical work that has endured for good reason, it rewards both first-time readers and those returning to it after years away.
- Author: Kahlil Gibran
- Publisher: Penguin Select Classics
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality
- ISBN: 978-9815204087
- Pages: 96 pages