C.S. Lewis published The Problem of Pain in 1940.
The Problem of Pain is a Christian apologetic work in which Lewis examines why suffering exists if God is good and powerful. It was published during the Second World War, when questions about suffering and evil had immediate personal and public importance.
Lewis discusses subjects including divine omnipotence, human freedom, animal pain, hell, and the meaning of suffering. The book is an argument in theology and philosophy rather than a memoir or a novel, and it is often read alongside his later work A Grief Observed.
The two books are easy to confuse because both address suffering, but they have different origins. The Problem of Pain presents a more systematic intellectual discussion, while A Grief Observed, published in 1961, reflects Lewis’s personal grief after his wife’s death.