I read it in the sunshine, which was entirely appropriate.' -Mark Helprin, NY Times bestselling author of many books, including A Winters Tale and A Soldier of the Great War Even the title represents multiple meanings woven throughout the book and, as in the solution to a mystery, unified and made clear at its end. As enjoyable as it is to follow him from birth through the fog of his twenties and into the sunlight at their end, you will see that you have also painlessly embraced a wonderful complexity. 'In this portrait of the Metaxas as a young man, deeply serious matters exist most comfortably with great wit and maximum humor. But here he reveals a personal story few have heard, taking us from his mostly happy childhoodand riotous triumphs at Yaleto the nightmare of drifting toward a dark abyss of meaninglessness from which he barely escapes.Īlong the way he introduces us to an unforgettable troupe of picaresque characters who join this quintessentially first-generation American boy in what is both bildungsroman and odysseyand which underscores just how funny, serious, happy, sad, and ultimately meaningful life can be. Renowned for his biographies of William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther, Metaxas is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, the witty host of the acclaimed Socrates in the City conversation series, and a nationally syndicated radio personality. What Happens When One of Americas Most Admired Biographers Writes His Own Biography?įor Eric Metaxas, the answer is Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Lifea poetic and sometimes hilarious memoir of his early years, in which the Queens-born son of Greek and German immigrants struggles to make sense of a world in which he never quite seems to fit.

Fish Out of Water by Eric Metaxas