The anonymous Syriac work entitled ‘The book of steps’, consisting of thirty chapters, probably belongs to the late fourth century; together with Aphrahat and Ephrem, it constitutes the most important body of early Syriac literature. First published in 1926, it only received its first translation into a modern European language (English) in 2004. Since the original editor considered it to be a Messalian work, it has usually been discussed in the context of the Messalian movement, most notably by C. Stewart in his ‘Working the earth of the heart’: the Messalian controversy in history (Oxford 1991). This aspect of the Liber graduum, however, is only mentioned here in passing (and Stewart's book is absent from the bibliography), for Fuchs's approach is very different: what she offers here is a meticulously careful study of the Liber graduum's understanding of the narrative of the Fall in the opening chapters of Genesis. Whereas most other early Christian traditions focus on the roles of Eve and the Serpent, the anonymous author of the Liber graduum is primarily interested in Adam and Satan. Although a reader wanting to find out about the community of ‘Upright’ and ‘Perfect’ (or ‘Mature’), to whom the Liber graduum was addressed, will need to look elsewhere, anyone with an interest in the multifarious exegesis of Genesis i–iii in the early Church should find this a valuable contribution.