What is the name of the epistolary C.S. Lewis novel in which a senior demon advises a junior tempter?

The Screwtape Letters is the epistolary C.S. Lewis novel in which a senior demon advises a junior tempter.

The book consists of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his nephew Wormwood. Screwtape offers advice about tempting a human known as “the Patient,” while Lewis presents the correspondence as a reverse examination of moral and spiritual failure.

The letters first appeared in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian in 1941 and were published as a book that same year. Lewis later dedicated the work to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, although the two writers had different views about its style.

A common mistake is to treat the book as a conventional story about demons. Its structure is mainly satirical and argumentative: readers infer the author’s moral perspective from advice that is deliberately misleading. The sequel, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, appeared in 1959.