The Madman

<p>   Khalil Gibran was an accomplished Lebanese writer philosopher and artist – and by all accounts the third most popular poet in history after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu. Born in 1883 into a disadvantaged Maronite Christian family his genius propelled him to the level of world renowned author with best-selling works like <em>The Prophet The Madman </em>and<em> Sand and Foam. </em>Gibran was influenced by his own religion as well as by the mysticism of the Sufis and in particular by the Bahá'í Faith a religion that stresses the spiritual unity of all mankind and recognises that we were all created by the same God.</p><p><em>   The Madman</em> is the voice of a mystic whose masks or personae have been “stolen”.  It is a distillate in parable form of the “true self” – full of the wonder of God and yet at times troubled with sardonic questions about man’s spiritual path.  The narrator – no doubt Gibran himself – is the impassioned seeker who expresses himself through the thirty-four parables and poems of <em>The Madman</em>.  Its bitter tones and dark spaces are not for the faint-hearted spiritual traveller but it is without doubt an honest and potent expression of a true seeker.</p>