Which C.S. Lewis book presents a fictional journey through Hell and Heaven?

The Great Divorce presents a fictional journey through Hell and Heaven.

C.S. Lewis published the book in 1945. Its narrator takes a bus journey from a bleak, shadowy version of Hell to the outskirts of Heaven, where the passengers meet bright spirits and face choices about desire, pride, resentment, and self-deception. The work uses a dreamlike narrative rather than a conventional theological treatise.

The title echoes William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but Lewis’s argument moves in the opposite direction: he portrays Heaven and Hell as fundamentally incompatible states rather than parts of a synthesis. The book is also influenced by George MacDonald, who appears as a guide-like figure in the narrative.

The Great Divorce is often mistaken for a direct account of Christian doctrine. It is better understood as imaginative apologetic fiction, using symbolic scenes and conversations to explore moral and spiritual ideas. The bus journey provides the central structure that makes the book distinctive among Lewis’s works.