Which C.S. Lewis book features the senior demon Screwtape writing letters to Wormwood?

The Screwtape Letters features the senior demon Screwtape writing letters to the junior demon Wormwood. C.S. Lewis presented the book as a series of fictional instructions about tempting a human being.

The work was first published in book form in 1942, after sections had appeared in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian. Lewis uses the demons’ viewpoint satirically: readers are meant to recognize how pride, distraction, resentment, and self-deception can distort ordinary life.

The narrative voice creates an intentional reversal. Screwtape calls God “the Enemy,” while the demonic bureaucracy treats human spiritual development as a problem to be managed. This framing is part of the book’s imaginative method, not a statement that Lewis endorsed the demons’ perspective.

The title is sometimes confused with other Lewis apologetic works, especially The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity. Unlike those books, The Screwtape Letters is written as fictional correspondence.