Screwtape writes the letters in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. The 1942 book is presented as a series of instructions from a senior demon to his inexperienced nephew, Wormwood.
Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to tempt a human patient away from Christian belief and moral attention. Lewis creates irony by presenting demonic advice as if it were a practical professional memorandum. The demons’ language exposes their pride, self-deception, and distorted understanding of human beings.
Wormwood is the recipient, not the writer, which is the most common point of confusion about the title. The book was first published during the Second World War and quickly became one of Lewis’s most widely read works. It is neither a conventional novel nor a direct autobiography, but a satirical theological work written in epistolary form.