Which 1940 book by C.S. Lewis argues that suffering can reveal human dependence on God?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book about suffering and human dependence on God.

Lewis published the work during the Second World War, when questions about evil, suffering, and divine goodness had urgent public importance. He examines pain, human freedom, divine omnipotence, animal suffering, hell, and heaven from a Christian theological perspective.

The book is an apologetic work: its purpose is to explain and defend Christian ideas rather than to record Lewis’s personal grief. That distinction matters because readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, Lewis’s later, much more intimate response to the death of his wife, Joy Davidman.

Lewis did not claim that suffering is pleasant or that every individual tragedy has an immediately understandable purpose. Instead, he explored how suffering can challenge self-sufficiency and direct attention toward dependence on God. The book remains one of his best-known works of Christian apologetics.