Which C.S. Lewis book features the talking ape Shift as its chief antagonist?

The talking ape Shift is the chief antagonist in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle.

Published in 1956, The Last Battle is the seventh and final published volume of The Chronicles of Narnia. Shift persuades the donkey Puzzle to wear a lion skin and impersonate Aslan. He then uses the deception to gain influence over the nearby Narnian authorities and to manipulate both Narnians and foreign invaders.

The plot centers on false religious claims, political exploitation, and the destruction of the old Narnia. Puzzle is not the main villain; he is a frightened and easily influenced participant in Shift’s scheme. This distinction matters because readers sometimes remember the lion skin more readily than the ape who devised the plan.

The book won the Carnegie Medal in 1957. Lewis wrote the Narnia novels as a connected imaginative series, although publication order and internal chronology are not identical.