I should preface this review by stating that my tolerance for academic prose has dropped significantly since withdrawing from the History of Religions PhD program at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. However the concept of sacred space in the context of Hinduism remains a deep and abiding interest for me, so I really wanted to like this book. But alas, I couldn't even make it halfway through. OUP really should have set an editor on this work before going to press: the structure of the book is haphazard and its argument unclear, theorists' names are dropped with little exposition of their relation to that argument, ideas are introduced and imputed significance only to vanish forever come the next paragraph. There is, I think, a lot of interesting material contained in this book, but it is sadly just about unreadable.