by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib American publisher Alfred Abraham Knopf (1892-1984) along with his wife Blanche Wolf (1894-1966), both born to a Jewish family, founded Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York City in 1915. The publishing house, which would bring out the best of North and Latin American, European, and Russian literature, soon became famous all over the world for its special attention to the quality of content, presentation, printing, binding, and design in his books.

by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet was not written in some faraway mysterious land, as one might assume from reading it. Almustafa, Almitra, and the people of Orphalese did not emanate to life in some lonely hermitage on the top of a mountain, but – unbelievable as it may seem – in a bustling and sometimes "lively and festive” estate in the countryside of Massachusetts, USA.

by Francesco Medici Kahlil Gibran wrote his longest book, Jesus the Son of Man: His Words and His Deeds as Told and Recorded by Those Who Knew Him, in a little over a year between 1926 and 1927 and New York publisher Alfred Knopf published it in the fall of 1928. Actually, the figure of Jesus had already appeared in Gibran’s writings and art in various forms. He also often told his patroness Mary Haskell that he had recurring dreams of him and mentioned wanting to write a life of Jesus in a 1909 letter to her.

By Glen Kalem-Habib and Francesco Medici  all rights reserved copyright 2022 © When Kahlil Gibran died on April 10, 1931, he had been living for almost twenty years in a one-room studio apartment on the third story of 51 West Tenth Street, NYC. During the latter part of his life, he’d often refer to his studio as ‘The Hermitage’ (al-Sawma‘ah, in Arabic), perhaps wanting to invoke feelings of solitude and refuge away from the sprawling city of New York.