What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1956 novel retelling the Cupid and Psyche myth?

C.S. Lewis’s 1956 novel retelling the Cupid and Psyche myth is Till We Have Faces.

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold was published in 1956 and was Lewis’s last completed novel. It reworks the ancient Cupid and Psyche story from the perspective of Orual, a princess who becomes queen of the fictional kingdom of Glome. The change in viewpoint gives the myth a psychologically complex narrator rather than presenting it as a simple fairy tale.

Lewis wrote the novel with Joy Davidman, whose criticism and literary judgment influenced its development. The book explores jealousy, possessiveness, love, religious experience, and the difficulty of understanding one’s own motives. Its title comes from the idea that people cannot truly present themselves until their self-deceptions are stripped away.

The novel is sometimes missed in lists of Lewis’s works because it is less familiar than the Narnia books. It is also distinct from The Four Loves, a nonfiction work published in 1960, and from The Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis’s 1933 allegorical novel.