Kahlil Gibran was born into an impoverished Christian family in Bsharri, Lebanon in 1883. His masterpiece, The Prophet, was first published in 1923 and is among the most-read books of the last century, inspiring the lyric-writing of John Lennon, among others. But Gibran enjoyed only scant recognition in his own time--his health broken by chronic illness and self-neglect, he died in 1931 aged just 48, in his adopted home of New York. He is buried at Bsharri, where his tomb, now a museum, is visited by more than 50,000 pilgrims annually.