What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book of Christian apologetics about temptation?

The Screwtape Letters is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book of Christian apologetics about temptation.

The book is presented as a series of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape offers advice on how to lead a human patient away from faith and moral discipline. Lewis uses this reversed viewpoint to examine pride, distraction, resentment, social pressure, and self-deception.

The work first appeared in Britain in 1941 as letters in The Guardian, a Church of England newspaper, before being published in book form in 1942. Its fictional format made abstract theological and ethical ideas vivid for a broad readership.

The title is sometimes confused with The Problem of Pain, which is a nonfiction discussion of suffering and Christian belief. The Screwtape Letters is also distinct from Lewis’s later fiction, despite its imagined demonic correspondence. Its satirical voice remains one of Lewis’s most recognizable literary techniques.