The Garden of the Prophet was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1933, two years after Gibran’s death in April 1931 (he died at forty-eight, from cirrhosis of the liver and incipient tuberculosis). The book was found in his papers — substantially complete but lacking his final revision — and was edited for publication by Barbara Young, his secretary and devotee.
The novel picks up where The Prophet ended: Almustafa has returned to his island homeland after twelve years in Orphalese. He gathers nine disciples in his mother’s garden and speaks to them about the relationship between human beings and the natural world — about the earth as sacred body, about the unity of all living things, about the God who is present in every grain of sand and every blade of grass.
Where The Prophet addressed human social relationships (love, marriage, work, friendship), The Garden of the Prophet addresses humanity’s relationship to nature and to the divine — the cosmic rather than the social. The prose is more mystical, more ecstatic, and more explicitly pantheistic than the earlier work: Gibran’s God is not a distant creator but an immanent presence in all things, and the proper human relationship to nature is not dominion but reverence.
The book concludes with Almustafa’s death — his return to “the greater sea” — completing a trilogy that was planned but never finished (the intended third volume, The Death of the Prophet, remained unwritten).
Collecting The Garden of the Prophet
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1933): Cloth binding, illustrated by Gibran.
Market values:
- First edition: $60–$200
- Good condition: $30–$80
- Later printings: $8–$20