Which C.S. Lewis book examines the problem of pain and suffering?

The C.S. Lewis book that examines pain and suffering is The Problem of Pain, published in 1940.

Lewis wrote the book as a work of Christian apologetics, asking how suffering can exist if God is good and powerful. He discusses free will, human nature, divine omnipotence, hell, and the role of pain in Christian thought. The book presents an intellectual argument rather than a personal diary of bereavement.

That distinction is important because readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. The former addresses suffering in general from a theological perspective; the latter records Lewis’s personal response after Joy Davidman’s death.

The Problem of Pain became one of Lewis’s best-known nonfiction works. Its arguments reflect the theological assumptions of the period in which it was written, and later readers have debated some of its conclusions. Even so, its central subject is unambiguous: the relationship between divine goodness and the existence of suffering.