The Four Loves is C.S. Lewis’s book about affection, friendship, eros, and charity. It was published in 1960 and developed from a BBC radio series broadcast in 1958.
Lewis organizes the book around four Greek terms: storge, philia, eros, and agape. He uses them to examine family affection, friendship, romantic love, and self-giving love, while also discussing how these forms of love can be distorted.
The work belongs to Lewis’s Christian nonfiction rather than his fictional writing. Its approach combines literary examples, philosophical reflection, and theological argument in an accessible style.
A common mix-up is to treat The Four Loves as a novel or as a volume in the Narnia series. It is neither: it is a short work of Christian reflection, following other broadcast-based books such as Mere Christianity.