This is the exquisitely tender story of a love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity and lyricism, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the beautiful girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man.

Portraying the exalted happiness and infinite sorrow of his relationship with Selma, Gibran at the same time probes the spiritual meaning of human existence with profound compassion. And he does so in a poetic prose that has magic and majesty.