Which C.S. Lewis book records his childhood and conversion journey?

Surprised by Joy records C.S. Lewis’s childhood, education, and movement toward Christianity.

Published in 1955, Surprised by Joy is an autobiographical work covering Lewis’s early life and intellectual development. It discusses his childhood reading, the death of his mother, his education, military service, and the changing forms of longing that he later called “Joy.” In Lewis’s usage, Joy was not simply happiness but an intense desire stimulated by experiences of beauty, imagination, or literature.

The book describes his gradual return to Christian belief. Lewis had been an atheist for part of his adult life, became a theist, and later became a Christian. He identifies conversations with fellow intellectuals and writers as important influences, while presenting his conversion as a long process rather than a single isolated moment.

Surprised by Joy is not a complete account of Lewis’s entire life. It ends before many of his best-known postwar books and before his marriage to Joy Davidman. Readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, which focuses on bereavement after Davidman’s death.