Which 1945 C.S. Lewis novel imagines a bus journey from a gray town to Heaven?

The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis’s 1945 novel about a bus journey from a gray, dreary town toward a radiant heavenly country. The narrator travels with a group of troubled passengers who must confront their desires and choices.

The book uses an imaginative afterlife framework rather than presenting itself as a literal map of Christian heaven and hell. Its title alludes to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, while its structure also recalls older allegorical journeys.

The passengers’ problems are represented through vivid figures, including people consumed by resentment, possessiveness, pride, or self-deception. Lewis’s central concern is the contrast between freedom and the refusal to change.

The Great Divorce is sometimes mistaken for a straightforward theological treatise. It is better described as a short allegorical fantasy with theological themes, published after Lewis’s wartime writing and before several of his later fictional works.