Which 1961 C.S. Lewis book explores the experience of grief after his wife’s death?

A Grief Observed is the 1961 C.S. Lewis book exploring grief after his wife’s death.

Lewis originally published the book under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. It presents a series of reflections written after Joy Davidman died of cancer in 1960. Rather than offering a conventional biography or a systematic theological argument, the book records Lewis’s changing thoughts, anger, doubt, loneliness, and attempts to understand suffering.

The work is notable because its tone is unusually direct and personal. Lewis questions some of the consoling explanations people commonly give to the bereaved, then examines how grief alters memory, prayer, and one’s sense of God. The pseudonym initially concealed his identity from many readers, though the author was later known.

A Grief Observed is sometimes confused with The Problem of Pain, Lewis’s earlier 1940 study of suffering. The two books approach the subject differently: The Problem of Pain is a general apologetic work, while A Grief Observed grows out of a specific personal loss.