For nearly half a century the charismatic, strikingly handsome spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti gathered an enormous following throughout Europe, India, Australia and North America. From the age of eighteen he was the forerunner of the type of iconoclasm that would bring immediate fame to cult figures in the late twentieth century. Yet recent biographies have left large areas of his life in mystifying darkness.

This, however, is no ordinary study of Krishnamurti, for it is written by one whose earliest memories are dominated by his presence as a doting second father-tolerant of pranks and...