In this valuable study of the meaning of illness in ascetic late antique literature, Andrew Crislip attempts to move beyond the broad generalisations and unnuanced assumptions that have plagued scholarly discussions of health in religious scholarship. Crislip's stated aim is to understand how the experience and – at times – pursuit of illness made meaning for monastic communities while simultaneously extolling the preternatural health of their members. While his study surveys a wide range of literary genres and late antique celebrities – the letters of Pachomius, historical accounts of monastic illness, hagiographical classics like the Life of Pachomius, the writings of Basil and Evagrius, the correspondence between Barsanuphius and John with the Sick Monk Andrew, and Greek and Coptic bioi – his focus is essentially on the ascetic. Like all authors, Crislip is forced to restrict the scope of his study; consequently, the valuation of illness in martyrological literature or in non-monastic patristic writers does not receive sustained attention. Using the diverse and at times contradictory frameworks of Susan Sontag, Byron Good and others, Crislip explores and probes the contradictory strains of thought in late antique literature, giving texture and shape to the rich discourse of askesis and imitatio, self-control and holiness, that dominated the landscape. His ability to tease out the troubling relationship between illness and askesis and the way that illness threatened the ideology of monasticism makes this book an important contribution to the field of late antiquity. His use of medical anthropology makes the book a model for those wishing to discuss the valuation of illness in pre-modern societies.