Book details journey from Atheist to Catholic

By Ignatius Press,

Sohrab Ahmari was an Iranian teenager living under the ayatollahs when he decided that there was no God. Nearly two decades later and as an American citizen, he would be baptized and confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church.

In FROM FIRE BY WATER, he recounts this unlikely journey, from the strident Marxism and atheism of a youth misspent on both sides of the Atlantic to a moral and spiritual awakening prompted by the Mass. At once a young intellectual’s finely crafted self-portrait and a life story at the intersection of the great ideas and events of our time, the book marks the debut of a compelling new Catholic voice.

Ahmari is currently the op-ed editor at the New York Post but previously served as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London, and as senior writer at Commentary magazine. FROM FIRE BY WATER illuminates his skill as an expert story-teller, delivering the reader an unforgettable experience.

Ahmari expertly weaves the tales of his unique childhood in Iran, his move across the ocean to the United States, and his terrible life choices into a book reminiscent of the great Saint Augustine’s own Confessions. FROM FIRE BY WATER honestly, and sometimes painfully, reveals that Ahmari clung to his indulgences and self-fulfillment rather obstinately before he was able to surrender himself fully to the truths of Catholic Christianity.

“FROM FIRE BY WATER is not so much about Sohrab Ahmari but about the work of divine grace in his soul disposed to hear God’s voice calling him with immeasurable and enduring love,” said Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. “It is the story of the journey of faith in which it is always God who first calls us to believe in Him and place all our trust in Him. The same humility before God, which disposed the author to respond to God’s call, permits him to give a most compelling and indeed inspiring account of how He came to know God, to love Him and to serve Him with all his heart. The author’s extraordinary gift for writing truly approaches, as best as one can at any given time, a true account of the incomparable beauty of the reality he recounts.”


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