The nineteen essays that make up this volume originated in a conference held at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in 2007. Leading scholars representing a range of disciplines – Classics, Philosophy, Cultural Theory, Ancient and Modern Literature, as well as Religious Studies – were invited to speak to the account of the martyrdom of Perpetua and her fellow Christians at Carthage at the beginning of the third century, a text on which the majority had not previously worked in detail. Although there is the inevitable unevenness in the quality of new insights, and some overlaps between essays, all participants evidently took their brief with utmost seriousness, producing a rich and suggestive set of close engagements, demonstrating just how creative ‘multidisciplinarity’ can be. The three headings under which the essays are grouped – ‘The martyr and her gender’, ‘Authority and testimony’, and ‘The text, the canon, and the margins’ – belie the different approaches and questions that the scholarly readers bring to their texts, as well as the intersections between them. A number read through the text to re-imagine the social context of those involved (Walter Ameling, Jan Bremmer). Some locate the prophetic or visionary aspects of the texts in the broader Christian and imperial framework (Christoph Markschies, Katharina Waldner) while Luca Bagetto explores how the Passio destabilises both charisma and law. Others trace the subsequent interpretation and development of the tradition in Augustine and into the medieval period (Joseph Farrell, Hanne Sigismund-Nielsen, Julia Weitbrecht). However, literary readings dominate: some are more historically conscious, choosing a literary context provided by comparable narratives regarding Lucretia (Sigrid Weigel), Cato's suicide following his own reading of the Phaedo (Giulia Sissa), the Maccabean mother(s) (Jan Willem van Henten) or by the Greek novels (David Konstan). Other close readings of the text draw out its rhetorical strategies (Craig Williams on gender; Jan den Boeft on the editor's intentions), or the ambiguities inherent in the combination of (supposed) autobiography and narrative (Mieke Bal, Marco Formisano). Developing this, Hartmut Böhme and Mieke Bal offer two very different readings drawing on psycho-analytical insights. More distant intertextual insights from testimony literature from the Nazi concentration camps (Philippe Mesnard), from film (van Henten), from literature and political philosophy (Bagetto) or from society (Bremmer: contemporary female suicide bombers) provide further provocations to reflection on the continuing ‘voice’ of the text. The essays are prefaced by a translation and edition of the text (by Farrell and Williams), and concluded by an autobiographical essay by Marina Warner in which the Passio intersects with her own Catholic childhood. The reviewer echoes the editors' hope that the volume will set a pattern for similar engagements with further early Christian texts.