Anne Alwis's book presents itself as a literary study of the concept of sexless marriage, as it appears in three short hagiographical texts in Greek. These depict the holy lives of a man and woman against the background of Christian persecution and/or early Christian monasticism but each presents difficulties as to its precise date of composition: Alwis concludes that the first probably dates from around 500, the second from between the sixth and the tenth or eleventh and the third from the ninth or tenth century. The book falls into two parts, the first an examination of the representations and implications of celibate marriage in these texts and of their many literary relatives, while the second contains the three texts, the first of almost 1,500 lines, and the latter two (more novelistic) texts, of only about 300 lines each. Each text is followed by an English translation, some textual notes and biblical references. In view of the fact that the rather fragmentary discussion in the first part is based on these three texts, it might have been preferable to reverse the order so that the reader met the stories before the theories. However, this inversion may be of symbolic significance for the theories seem to be largely based on secondary literature rather than on the texts, and indeed the author often admits that the texts reveal little that is relevant to her argument. The texts, all of which have a fairy-tale quality, contain hagiographic topoi such as visions and miracles and also many ascetic topoi – not only the choice of celibacy, but the parental pressure to marry, the decision to renounce wealth and to enter a monastery, the moving death scene: all these are familiar from earlier, lengthier, ascetic texts such as the life of Macrina or that of Melania the younger. The unusual combination of celibacy and marriage results in a love story based on each couple's shared commitment to spiritual ideals as well as to each other. However, the fact that the ideal of celibacy occurs in these texts in the context of marriage seems more or less incidental: it is only when celibacy is combined with a commitment to the ascetic life that true holiness is attained. In the case of Andronikos and Athanasia, the couple in fact decide to renounce sex after the birth of their children, but it is only when Andronikos, some ten years later, persuades Athanasia to renounce their worldly life after the deaths of these children that they become saintly: celibate marriage itself is not sufficient. Later, when they live together as ascetics for twelve years, it is not as husband and wife, for Andronikos fails to realise that his companion is in fact Athanasia disguised as a man. The book contains a considerable number of grammatical, typographical and bibliographical errors.