Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) was a Lebanese-American poet, painter and essayist. Born in Bsharri, a Maronite village in the mountains of Ottoman Lebanon, he emigrated with his mother and siblings to Boston at twelve, returned to Beirut for schooling, studied painting in Paris and settled in New York in 1912. He wrote first in Arabic, where his romantic, rebellious prose and verse helped renew the language, and then in English. The Prophet, published in 1923, has sold tens of millions of copies and has never been out of print; Sand and Foam, Jesus the Son of Man and The Wanderer followed.