The Book of Khalid

The first novel by an Arab-American writer in English, The Book of Khalid (1911) arrived like a voice from somewhere no one expected. Ameen Rihani tells the story of two young men from Baalbek, Khalid and Shakib, who leave Lebanon for turn-of-the-century New York seeking their fortune. What they find is a city of teeming immigrants, bureaucratic humiliation at Ellis Island, and the grinding poverty of the poor foreign-born. Khalid, the eternal dreamer, throws himself into the city's political and cultural life with often comic, often painful results. When they return to Lebanon, their heads full of New World ideas, Khalid becomes an accidental prophet. His attempt to blend Western philosophy with Eastern spirituality nearly sparks a religious movement and nearly gets him killed. Rihani wrote with worldly compassion and great good humor, playing with classical Arabic forms and Western conventions to create something entirely new. Kahlil Gibran illustrated the work, and the influence echoes forward to The Prophet. This is a bridge between cultures, but more importantly, it's a deeply human story about finding oneself between worlds.