The Madman and The Forerunner

These are Gibran's first two books written in English, gathered in one recording. The Madman opens with a man whose masks are stolen while he sleeps and who finds that being seen without them sets him free; around him come short parables of a scarecrow, a wise dog, two sleepwalkers and a fox who sets out at sunrise to eat a camel. The Forerunner continues in the same vein, with parables in which kings, a hermit, a saint, a dying man and a vulture show how vanity and fear shape the way we judge one another.

Gibran published The Madman in 1918 and The Forerunner in 1920, while he was still writing in Arabic for the émigré press in New York, and the spare, aphoristic tone of both leads straight to The Prophet three years later. David Wales reads the two collections in about an hour and a half, which makes them a natural companion to the recording of The Prophet in this library.