What was the title of C.S. Lewis's 1942 epistolary novel narrated through letters from a senior demon?

The Screwtape Letters is C.S. Lewis’s 1942 epistolary novel narrated through letters from a senior demon.

The book consists of correspondence from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape offers advice on tempting a human patient, while Lewis uses the demonic perspective to examine pride, distraction, self-deception, fear, and spiritual complacency.

The letters were first published in book form in 1942 after appearing in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian. Lewis dedicated the work to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, although Tolkien disliked the book’s format and reportedly found its continued use of the demonic voice uncomfortable.

The unusual viewpoint can cause confusion about the book’s narrator. Screwtape is not Lewis’s spokesman in a straightforward sense; the irony comes from allowing evil characters to reveal their own warped logic. The work is fiction and satire rather than a theological treatise written as direct instruction. Its title character later became one of Lewis’s most recognizable creations.