What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1942 fantasy novel presented as letters from a senior demon?
Answer
The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 fantasy novel presented as letters from a senior demon.
The book consists of correspondence from Screwtape, an experienced tempter, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to influence a human being, whom the demons call “the Patient.” Lewis uses this inverted perspective to examine temptation, pride, distraction, self-deception, and spiritual habits.
The work first appeared in serial form in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian during 1941 and was published as a book in 1942. Its epistolary structure lets Lewis discuss moral and religious ideas through irony rather than through a conventional theological treatise.
The letters are fictional and satirical, not presented as an actual document from the supernatural world. Readers sometimes mistake the title for a general collection of Christian essays, but its distinctive form—a demon writing professional advice to another demon—is central to the book.