Critics about Alexandre Najjar's Kahlil Gibran

in French, Lebanese and Canadian press

• “This well-researched biography of the author of The Prophet is captivating… The reading of this new biography abounding with information focuses on the chain of people that helped transform the young immigrant into a writer universally known.”

• “Lebanese, like Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet, which has been translated into over forty languages, Alexandre Najjar has published poems, historical novels, and biographies. He is fascinated by the enigma of Gibran, an Arab who wrote in English and put brush to canvas with talent.. Gibran? An unusual man who wrote a cult-book. Here, perfectly discovered and analyzed down to his deepest thoughts.”

• “Alexandre Najjar gives us a fresh look at the author, far from the clichés that distorted his real image…. The approach is simple but effective and lures the reader into wanting to know more about the life of this man, the artist and writer whose work continues to attract millions of readers around the world.”

• “Alexandre Najjar has succeeded in shedding light on Gibran and the power of his message which strikes home and is still much needed.”

• “No one could have told this story of an exemplary destiny, overflowing with passion and hope, better than Alexandre Najjar, a modern Lebanese.”

• “What characterizes Alexandre Najjar's book, aside from the fact that he unravels surprising aspects of Gibran's personality, is that he transforms the life of the writer and his art into a novel with great panache.”

• “The development of Khalil Gibran's life and career in Alexandre Najjar's pen is carried off with such inspiration that the book reads easily from beginning to end. The physiognomy and work of the character are so universal that to try to differentiate them borders on a challenge. But Alexandre Najjar, whose talent is evident in other literary genres, reveals his literary prowess in the most recent of his works, Khalil Gibran, the author of The Prophet. On the trail of precise details, some never before published, Alexandre Najjar took his inspiration from the writings of Gibran's original texts, a collection of docu­ments, and an impressive biography. With a spirited style , he solves some of the enigmas surrounding Gibran.

• “With a solid style, accurate and precise details, scholarship, and a deep vision of things… , Alexandre Najar does not content himself with presenting information previously revealed; he adds to the analysis a passionate literary substance that allows this biography to read like a novel.”

• “A clear and effective biography of a visionary rebel.”

• “Finally a biography of Gibran that puts the pieces of the puzzle together in the life of the artist/writer torn between the East and the West.”

• “He is the most famous stranger on earth, a name without a face, a writer without a legend, who even in death kept the freshness of a debutant. Several critics have panned The Prophet, yet the work remains one of the most widely read all over the world, after the Bible. An Arab writing in English, a Lebanese from the mountains who forged his path in exile, he found freedom and rediscovered an excessive passion for his homeland. He is a reader of the Bible talking like a Sufi, a Christian who cherishes the glory of Islam, a lover of mature women who seeks the purity of his soul in the reflection of his works. He is a case. The Lebanese poet, Adonis, hit the nail right on the head in speaking of his problem, or rather of ours, “He is a star spinning outside the orbit of that other sun, the one of literature, in his universal acceptance.” A young novelist, Alexandre Najjar, writes the biography of this extraordinary man, Khalil Gibran (1883-1931).
  
  Gibran began his life writing and painting in his birthplace, Bécharré, which was under Ottoman occupation – Bécharré with its waterfalls, its forests, its snowy winters, its Galilean fields, its hilled vineyards and grapes suspended like golden chandeliers – to which he paid a final and triumphant tribute by returning in a cedar wood coffin. Najjar takes on the role of a meticulous detective. He retraced the steps of his character, opened his mail, and separated fact from fiction. Didn't Gibran, in fact, claim he was born in India, had learned drawing from Rodin and was the target of a Turkish conspiracy to kill him in Paris? Najjar, in a simple style, reconstructs Gibran's travels abroad and self-exile, the “cage” whose bars Gibran built with his own hands. Gibran's life is marked by three cities, Boston, Paris, and New York; three deaths, his brother's, his sister's and his mother's; and three women, Florence Pierce, his instructor who introduced him to a famous photographer and reader of William Blake, Mary Haskell, the patron who supplied him with a salary as well as financing his studies and his trip to Paris, where he worked with a disciple of Gustave Moreau, and Barbara Young, the guardian of the temple; last but not least, the young editor, Alfred Knopf. “The more I see this author, the more I like him. He is not a philanthropist. He is honest and leaves nothing to chance.” Lucky author!
  A holy book. When all is said and done, Gibran lived a strange life, more meditative than active. He was haunted by the notion of internal purification, which always seemed somewhat evanescent, like some of his love affairs, where good as well as bad luck played a big role, by death prowling and depriving him of his loved ones, and by the feminist Mary, who loved without really loving but who financed. After the stage of painting people, (Sarah Bernhardt posed for him, but from afar as she was already sixty nine years old at the time), the events in the life of Gibran all seemed to lead the making of the unique book The Prophet. It was like a holy book, and for him it was a rebirth.
  “It is the biggest challenge in my life. My entire being is in The Prophet. Everything I have ever done before… was only a prelude to this.” The little oriental prince in exile slipped into the role of a messiah. He is not the only one of his era to preach in the desert of a world who had just proclaimed the death of God. Nietzsche and Herman Hesse preceded him. The spirituality of the Prophet could easily have inspired the contemporary New Age. Syncretic, humanistic, replete with good intentions, and easily adaptable to all eras. “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself,” etc. The book would not have had any lasting impact had Gibran not been inspired by a freshness and unique literary energy. His words both spoken and written, about exile and lost country, gushing forth from Eastern and Western springs, through various undulations, touched a universal river. “

• “A prophet is dead,” was the title of a New York daily on the morning after Khalil Gibran's death on April 10, 1931. At forty-eight, the Lebanese immigrant had left behind a an important body of work, in particular a book that became a cult-book of spirituality and brotherhood among men. Selling millions since 1923, The Prophet, this “little Bible,” still leaves an impact on its readers, as does the life of this author, brilliantly depicted by the author Alexandre Najjar, himself also Lebanese. There are several biographies of Gibran in print, but Najjar's is different not only because it is newly published, but because it is comprehensive, based on extended research, and uncovers new in­formation. With well-documented extracts from his correspondence and succinct, deep analyses on the works of Gibran, Najjar's book includes an extensive bibliography. At certain instances in the story, constructed as a character portrait blending into a novel, the biographer interprets, critiques, and rectifies the claims of previous biographies of Gibran, with supporting evidence.”

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