'Through the Narrow Gate' is Karen Armstrong's memoir of life inside a Catholic convent in the 1960s. With gentleness and honesty, Armstrong takes her readers on a revelatory journey that begins with her decision, at the age of seventeen, to devote her life to God as a nun. Yet once she embarked upon her spiritual training, she encountered a frightening and oppressive world, fossilized by tradition, which moulded, isolated and pushed her to the limit of what she could endure.
The book was an international best-seller when it was first published in 1981. This revised edition, with a new introduction by the author, brings Karen Armstrong's remarkable story of devotion and suffering to a new generation of readers.
"This articulate and sensitive writer spares no punches in her account of the agonising fight to find herself under the weight of rules and expectations, lies and aggression... 'Through the Narrow Gate' is written as racily and as emotionally as a novel... the picture of convent life is vivid and terrifying."
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
"Painful and honest...Karen Armstrong's simple account of her struggles - both in pursuit of that self-death that the true religious craves, and, later, against her unconscious reflection of life in an ultra-strict Order - says a great deal about destructive trends in modern life... A very moving book."
DAILY TELEGRAPH
"The strength of this unself-pitying chronicle is the author's capacity to convey the overwhelming attraction of the life she sought, even as she documents its shattering effect on the human personality... A scrupulous record of one woman's spiritual journey, excellently written and profoundly moving."
COSMOPOLITAN