The Prophet

Kahlil Gibran · 1923

4.8 · 4 ratings

About the book

A prophet about to sail home is asked, one last time, about love, work, children and death — and answers in twenty-six short prose poems. It has sold in the tens of millions because people keep giving it away at weddings and at funerals.

Try the short course

Part 1 · The day the ship comes. The first six slides, free.

The day the ship comes

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Almustafa has waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for a ship to carry him home. On the seventh day of the month of reaping, he climbs a hill outside the walls and sees it coming in with the mist. The gates of his heart, Gibran writes, are flung open.

Then he walks back down, and before he reaches the bottom a sadness comes over him.

That is how the book begins: not with a teaching, but with a man who finally gets the thing he has wanted for twelve years and finds that it hurts. Everything he says afterwards is said from inside that double feeling. The joy and the ache arrive together, and the book never pretends you can have the first without the second.

Inside the course

12 parts

Almustafa on the quay: the day the ship comesFree above
On love, and what Gibran refuses to promise about it
On marriage, and the spaces in your togetherness
On children — «they come through you but not from you»
On giving, and the giver who gives without wounding
On work as love made visible
On joy and sorrow, carved by the same knife
On houses and clothes: the comfort that becomes a master
On crime and punishment, and the root they share
On freedom, reason and passion
On teaching, friendship and the words we spend
On death, and the farewell that closes the book

Questions

Is The Prophet free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

What is the short course?

12 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. The Prophet is waiting in the app’s library.