What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1942 novel featuring a senior demon’s letters?

C.S. Lewis’s 1942 novel featuring a senior demon’s letters is The Screwtape Letters. The book is presented as correspondence from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood.

Screwtape advises Wormwood on tempting a human being, whom the letters call “the Patient.” Lewis uses the demonic viewpoint satirically: the advice reveals pride, distraction, self-deception, and other moral weaknesses that the human world often overlooks. The “Enemy” in the letters is God, while the demons serve the opposing power.

Lewis wrote the work during the Second World War, and it first appeared in serialized form in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian before book publication. It is not a conventional narrative with scenes unfolding in chronological order. Its epistolary structure lets Lewis reverse ordinary moral language and examine temptation through ironic instruction.