Truth, Love, Beauty, Liberation, and Wisdom weaved into this 28 timeless poems, a trully masterpiece of Khalil Gibran. This rare poetic gem embody the conversation between prophet Almustafa with a group of people concerning life and human condition.

First published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages. The book seamlessly unites the mundane and the transcendental, concerning every aspect of life. Gibran considered this book his masterpiece and said: "I think I've never been without The Prophet since I first conceived the book back in Mount Lebanon. It seems to have been a part of me... I kept the manuscript four years before I delivered it over to my publisher because I wanted to be sure, I wanted to be very sure, that every word of it was the very best I had to offer."

The Madman is the first English poem of Khalil Gibran and first published in 1918.

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.