It has often been remarked that for a culture that held so firmly to the notion of nonself, writers in the Tibetan literary tradition have produced a prodigious number of works devoted to the individual. Yet, the diversity of Tibetan life writing defies its categorization (or noncategorization) as modern autobiography in the Enlightenment sense, or merely as a form of Buddhist hagiography. Over the last two decades, the field of Tibetan biographical studies has been significantly influenced by developments in feminist literary criticism and the study of non-Western life writing. First published as two issues of the journal Life Writing in 2020, The Selfless Ego: Configurations of Identity in Tibetan Life Writing, edited by Lucia Galli and Franz Xaver Erhard, is a collection of articles that spans the range of contemporary approaches to narratives about Tibetan lives. The volume features thirteen contributions by scholars who participated in two conferences that centered on new approaches to Tibetan life writing held in 2012 and 2017 at Wolfson College, Oxford University. Together, this collection of innovative indigenous-centered methodologies is a testament to the diverse and hybrid nature of the rich genre.

Conceived as a primer in traditional forms of Tibetan Buddhist life writing, the book begins with a brief introduction and then is divided into two parts. The first part, “Memory and Imagination in Tibetan Hagiographical Writing,” focuses on “the inner tensions between literary convention and self-expression” (p. i). Ulrike Roesler surveys the spectrum of Tibetan life writing and highlights critical self-reflections on the representation of the self in the Tibetan literary tradition. In an expansive framing of the volume, she urges scholars to go beyond the category of namthar, or the Buddhist liberation story of an exceptional individual, to capture the rich diversity of Tibetan life writing. David Templeman explores the genre of nested autobiography through a study of a short autobiography of the Buddhist master Tāranātha (1575–1643) that is inserted into his larger autobiography. Cécile Ducher examines the role of gur (songs of experience) as a legitimizing tool in a group of biographies dedicated to the eleventh-century Kagyu master Marpa (1012–97). Sangseraima Ujeed explores the relationship between life writing and institutional history by demonstrating how the topyik (record of teachings received) of the Mongolian Buddhist master Dzaya Paṇḍita (1599–1662) functioned as a life story of the larger Geluk tradition. Cathy Cantwell traces the construction of authority in Tantric communities through a study of the continuities centered on transmission and tertön (treasure revealer) identity in the connected life stories of Dudjom Rinpoche (1904–87), Dudjom Lingpa (1835–1904), and the seventeenth-century lama Dudul Dorje (1615–72). Hanna Havnevik grapples with idealized conceptions of Buddhist women by attending to the accounts of Tashi Tsomo, the mother of the nineteenth-century master Trülzhik Tongdröl Dorje (1862–1922), in his namthar. Sarah Shaw offers a Southeast Asian comparison, by focusing on the emergence of life writing in the Thai Forest monastic tradition, a relatively late development that occurred in Anglophone literature of the twentieth century.

Part two, “Conjuring Tibetan Lives,” is an exploration of forms of Tibetan life writing that disrupt typical assumptions that equate Tibetan life writing with Buddhist hagiography. Rachael Griffiths explores the relationship between war and memory in an account of the 1727–28 civil war in central Tibet in the autobiography of Sumpa Khenpo (1704–88). Franz Xaver Erhard highlights the interplay of genealogy, autobiography, and memoir as a form of legitimation in the aristocratic autobiography of Doring Tenzin Penjor (b. 1760). Lucia Galli examines the tensions between fact and fiction in indigenous forms of diary writing, convincingly situating the diary form in a longer history of record keeping and administration. Isabella Ofner foregrounds the negotiation of gender in the construction of national history in exile through a study of the life writing of Dorje Yudon Yuthok (1912–98) and Diki Tsering (1901–81). Lama Jabb reckons with the artistic legacy of the Tibetan folk singer Dubhe through an eloquent consideration of an oral speech containing biographical details that circulated on Chinese social media. Charles Ramble closes the volume by extending the study of biographical narratives of Tibetan Buddhist individuals to that of objects. Through a cogent examination of the social lives of two ritual objects, a turquoise vase and a dagger, he argues for the centrality of objects in the construction of community identities in Mustang.

This is a book of many strengths. Following Roesler's call to pluralize our understanding of Tibetan life writing, several authors focus their attention on the marginalized voices of women in a literary tradition dominated by accounts of the achievements of men deemed exceptional. Themes typically absent from traditional discussions of Buddhist hagiography, such as war and peace and secular life narratives, are also put front and center. The decentering of conventional notions of autobiography is fruitful in careful analyses of life writing as a much broader practice, be it in the form of record keeping, song or through mixed media narratives on the internet. Perhaps understandable for an edited volume, the sheer range of terminology for forms of Tibetan life writing makes drawing conclusions from across individual articles difficult at times. An expanded introduction might have provided more context for the uninitiated reader, especially as the volume is imagined as an introduction to the subject.

These minor contentions aside, The Selfless Ego: Configurations of Identity in Tibetan Life Writing is a compelling contribution to the fields of Tibetan literary studies, Buddhist religious culture, and the study of non-Western life writing. In addition to classes focusing on Tibet, the book would make a strong addition to advanced undergraduate and graduate syllabi on Buddhist literature, life writing, and non-Western literary traditions.