What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1956 autobiographical book about his return to Christianity?

C.S. Lewis’s 1956 autobiographical book about his return to Christianity is Surprised by Joy.

The book recounts major stages in Lewis’s intellectual and spiritual development. It covers his childhood, his early loss of religious belief, his education, his experience in the First World War, and his eventual movement back toward Christianity. Lewis describes conversion as a process shaped by reading, argument, imagination, and personal reflection.

The title refers to the idea of joy as a sudden experience of longing or desire that points beyond ordinary satisfaction. Lewis connected this feeling with what he called “sehnsucht,” a German term often used to describe intense longing. The book is an autobiography rather than a conventional systematic defense of Christianity.

Readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, Lewis’s later reflection on bereavement after the death of his wife. Surprised by Joy was published in 1955 in the United Kingdom and in 1956 in the United States; 1956 is the commonly cited American publication year.