Quintman is the leading authority on the Milarepa story, and this book is the most important contribution to our understanding of this great narrative's rich history to date. -- Kurtis R. Schaeffer, University of Virginia

Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052-1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyon Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.