What 1940 C.S. Lewis book examines the challenge of human suffering?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book examining the challenge of human suffering.

Published in 1940, the book is a work of Christian apologetics rather than a personal memoir. Lewis considers why suffering exists if God is good and powerful, discussing free will, divine justice, human nature, animal suffering, and the idea of hell.

Lewis wrote the book before the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. That distinction matters because readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, his later, intensely personal response to bereavement. The two books approach suffering from very different perspectives.

The Problem of Pain became one of Lewis’s most influential nonfiction works. It presents an intellectual defense of Christian belief, while acknowledging that philosophical explanations do not remove the emotional reality of pain. Lewis returned to related questions in sermons, essays, and fiction throughout his career.