What was C.S. Lewis’s wartime book about suffering, published in 1940?

C.S. Lewis’s wartime book about suffering, published in 1940, was The Problem of Pain.

The Problem of Pain examines a classic theological question: how suffering and evil can exist if God is good and powerful. Lewis addresses pain, human freedom, divine goodness, punishment, and the possibility of hell. The book presents an organized argument rather than a personal diary, and it became one of his best-known works of Christian apologetics.

Lewis wrote it during the early years of the Second World War. Its setting matters because the subject had immediate significance for readers living amid bombing, military loss, and uncertainty. However, the book is not a direct account of Lewis’s own grief. It is a philosophical and theological treatment of the problem of suffering.

Readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed, which Lewis wrote much later after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. The earlier book asks general theological questions; the later one records the raw experience of bereavement and doubt.