Parables & poetry · Free digital edition
The Madman: His Parables and Poems by Kahlil Gibran, Free to Read and Listen
By Kahlil Gibran · 1918
Masks fall away in Gibran’s first English-language collection, where brief parables and poems turn strangeness into insight.
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Published in 1918, The Madman: His Parables and Poems was Kahlil Gibran's first English-language collection. In brief parables and poems, Gibran uses the figure of the madman — a speaker whose masks have been stolen and who must face the world unguarded — to turn strangeness into insight. The opening lines set the tone directly: "one day I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen." Each short piece stands on its own, making the book well suited to readers who prefer to move at their own pace through individual works rather than a continuous narrative. The edition is free to read and listen to online, with no account or checkout required.
- Free to read and listen online with no account or checkout required
- Synchronized word and sentence highlighting follows along with read-aloud playback
- Select any passage to simplify, summarize, or ask a question using built-in AI tools
Accessible reading tools
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Free text-to-speech
Listen to the visible book text at your pace without buying an audiobook or creating an account.
Synchronized highlighting
Sentence and word highlighting move with the voice, helping you follow the page and keep your place.
Built-in AI reading help
Select a passage to get key points, simplify difficult wording, request an explanation, or ask a question.
This edition includes several tools intended to make reading more comfortable for a wider range of people. Text-to-speech reads the visible text aloud, and sentence and word highlighting stays synchronized with playback so you can follow along visually at the same time. You can also select any passage and use built-in AI tools to get key points, simplify the wording, hear an explanation, or ask a question about what you just read. These features are designed with readers who have dyslexia, ADHD, learning disabilities, or visual-tracking needs in mind, and may also help people reading in English as an additional language. No special setup is required to use them.
From the opening pages
Begin reading
“You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: one day I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen.”
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