Thursday 20 January 2011

Gibran, Khalil "The Prophet"

Gibran, Khalil "The Prophet" - 1923 

"The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays written in 1923 by the Lebanese-born American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. In the book, the prophet Almustafa, who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years, is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with 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, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death."

I read this book a while ago since it had been a suggestion for our book club (although we didn't choose to read it). Even though I normally don't like poetry as much as novels, I really liked this one.

Somewhere I read the book attempts to provide the reader with a guide to living. And I think that is exactly what it tries and in what it succeeds quite well. There are different chapters on life and death, joy and sorrow, work and play, marriage, children, truth, etc. Even though this is a book mainly settled in the Eastern culture, I think we can all learn from it, even in our modern times.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

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