The collection that brought Tagore the 1913 Nobel Prize, the first awarded to a non-European. These prose poems of spiritual devotion, addressed to a beloved God who is also the whole of existence, have a quality of luminous simplicity that made them revolutionary. "Where the mind is without fear" has become an anthem; the entire collection reads as a sustained act of gratitude for being alive.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.