Which C.S. Lewis book features the character Orual as its narrator?

Till We Have Faces features Orual as its narrator. C.S. Lewis’s 1956 novel presents much of the story as Orual’s first-person account of her life as princess and queen of Glome.

Orual is the eldest daughter of the king of Glome and the half-sister of Psyche, the figure corresponding to the beloved mortal in the Cupid and Psyche myth. Her narration records family conflict, political responsibility, jealousy, love, and her struggle to understand the gods and her own accusations against them.

This narrative choice distinguishes the novel from many familiar versions of the myth. The story is not told mainly from Psyche’s perspective, and Lewis does not use an omniscient narrator to keep Orual at a distance. Her voice shapes the reader’s understanding, while the later movement of the book challenges the completeness of her self-interpretation.

Readers sometimes confuse Orual with characters from the Chronicles of Narnia because both works use mythic imagery and moral transformation. Orual belongs to Lewis’s adult retelling of a classical myth, not to Narnia. The book’s title suggests that honest self-knowledge and true encounter require people to confront the faces they have hidden from themselves.