Spirits Rebellious

When first published in the original Arabic, this book aroused considerable agitation and intrigue. It was burned publicly in the Beirut market place by furious church and state officials, who denounced it as poisonous and dangerous to the peace of the country. Gibran himself was exiled. But this was at a time when Lebanon was in virtual slavery to oppressive Turkish rule. Years later his exile was remanded, and the church embraced him without conciliation on his part. Yet the record remains as Gibran wrote it here: his profoundly felt anger and indignant protest at the vicious inequality of man and woman in marriage - the wretched failure of the principles of law and justice and the corrupt, thieving practices of religious administration in the Near East of his time.