Screwtape is the senior demon who writes to his nephew in The Screwtape Letters.
C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book presents a series of fictional letters from Screwtape, an experienced tempter, to his younger nephew Wormwood. The letters offer advice on how to influence a human subject away from Christian faith and moral discipline.
Lewis uses the demonic viewpoint as an ironic device. The book’s arguments are not endorsements of Screwtape’s advice; instead, the reversed perspective exposes habits such as vanity, distraction, resentment, and self-deception.
Wormwood is the junior demon assigned to the human patient, while Screwtape acts as his supervisor and correspondent. The book is often described as satire, but it is also a work of Christian apologetic fiction. Its unusual narrative voice makes it one of Lewis’s most distinctive books.