The Madman is probably Kahlil Gibran’s second most well-known work after The Prophet. It was written in 1918 and consists of short essays and poems with ironic lights on the beliefs, aspirations, and vanities of humankind. Read “How I Became a Madman,” “The Two Hermits,” “The Wise Dog,” “The Good God and the Evil God,” “Night and the Madman,” and many more.
“You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,–the seven masks I have fashioned an worn in seven lives, -I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”
