What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book arguing that suffering can have a place in Christian belief?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book arguing that suffering can have a place in Christian belief.

Lewis examines why an all-powerful and good God would permit pain, loss, and evil. He discusses human freedom, divine goodness, punishment, animal suffering, and the Christian idea of Heaven. The book is an argument in Christian apologetics rather than a personal memoir or a fictional allegory.

It was written before Lewis experienced the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. That timing matters because readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed, which reflects directly on bereavement after Davidman’s death. Lewis later acknowledged that the experience of grief challenged some of the emotional confidence of his earlier work.

The book is also distinct from The Great Divorce, a fictional journey through an imagined afterlife, and from Miracles, which focuses on the possibility and nature of supernatural events. Its central subject is the theological problem posed by suffering.