A Bad Beginning The Path to Islam

Now in his 80s, Gai Eaton describes how, after a strange childhood completely isolated from other children, followed by a Cambridge education and life as an actor and later as a diplomat, circumstances led him at the age of 30 to Islam. Fascinated by the vagaries of human behavior and the strangeness of human destinies, he has observed the human scene with a novelist's eye and traced the profound changes in attitudes and tastes which have taken place in a single lifetime. He recounts his youthful adventures with the clear-sight and understanding only possible for someone whom age has freed from the passions which once possessed him. What makes this work unique is the juxtaposition of hindsight with diary entries made at the time, which gives a quality of immediacy to a true story that includes reminiscences of the diplomatic life and an outline of the Sufi path.

Charles le Gai Eaton was born in Switzerland and educated at Charterhouse and King's College, Cambridge. He became an actor, a teacher and a journalist in Jamaica before joining the British Diplomatic Service. He served for many years as a consultant to the Islamic Cultural Center in London and has written three major works on Islam to wide acclaim.