Which C.S. Lewis book is presented as a conversation with a senior tempter named Screwtape?

The Screwtape Letters is the C.S. Lewis book presented as a conversation with a senior tempter named Screwtape.

The book consists of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood. Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to tempt a human known only as “the Patient.” Lewis uses the fictional correspondence to examine pride, distraction, self-deception, resentment, and other moral weaknesses.

The letters first appeared in the Anglican newspaper The Guardian during 1941, and the collected book was published that year. Lewis later dedicated it to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, although the two writers disagreed about the book’s tone and method.

The format can cause confusion because the work is not a conventional novel with a normal narrator. Screwtape’s advice is deliberately ironic: the demons describe evil as if it were sensible administration, allowing readers to see the distortion in their reasoning.