— Books
Three volumes.
Ten years.
The Prophet resolves. You are not left mid-sentence, and you do not need the next one to feel you have read a whole book. But it is the first movement of a single argument that takes three volumes and about a decade to finish, and the questions it opens are not rhetorical — the author is asking them at work as well as on the page.
Reading order
There is only one, and it is the order they are published in. Start with The Prophet. When there is more to say about that, it will be said here.