Which C.S. Lewis book records his reflections after Joy Davidman’s death?

A Grief Observed records C.S. Lewis’s reflections after Joy Davidman’s death.

Published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, the book presents Lewis’s raw and questioning response to bereavement. Davidman died of cancer in 1960, and Lewis wrote about anger, loneliness, doubt, memory, and the difficulty of reconciling suffering with belief in God.

The work is notable because its tone is more immediate and unsettled than that of Lewis’s formal apologetic books. It does not offer a tidy sequence of answers. Instead, it shows grief changing the way a believer experiences prayer, certainty, and even personal identity.

The pseudonym sometimes leads readers to treat the book as anonymous, but Lewis’s authorship became known. It is also frequently confused with Surprised by Joy, which is an autobiography about his earlier life and conversion rather than a memoir of mourning.