What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1945 Christian allegory about a demon’s advice?

The Screwtape Letters is C.S. Lewis’s 1945 Christian allegory about a demon’s advice.

The book is presented as a series of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to tempt and mislead a human referred to as “the Patient.” Lewis uses the fictional correspondence to examine pride, distraction, fear, vanity, and self-deception.

The letters first appeared in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian in 1941, and the collected book was published in 1942 in Britain and 1942 in the United States. Its unusual viewpoint lets Lewis criticize destructive habits indirectly, often through irony.

The title is sometimes confused with The Great Divorce, another Lewis work involving a fantastic journey and questions about heaven and hell. The Screwtape Letters is specifically structured as correspondence from an older tempter to a younger one, making its format central to the book’s identity.