What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book about suffering and God’s goodness?

C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book about suffering and God’s goodness is The Problem of Pain. The work examines why a good and powerful God might permit pain, evil, and human suffering.

Lewis approaches the subject through Christian theology and philosophy, discussing divine omnipotence, human freedom, punishment, animal pain, and the possibility of hell. It is an argument about the intellectual problem of suffering rather than a personal diary of bereavement.

That distinction matters because readers often confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed after Joy Davidman’s death and focused on the emotional experience of mourning. The Problem of Pain appeared years earlier, before that loss. Lewis later acknowledged that abstract arguments about suffering did not automatically remove the anguish of personal grief.