Which C.S. Lewis book recounts the death of his wife and his grief?

C.S. Lewis’s book about the death of his wife and his grief is A Grief Observed. It was published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, partly because Lewis wanted readers to encounter the reflections without immediately attaching them to his public reputation.

The book consists of frank spiritual and emotional reflections written after the death of Joy Davidman, whom Lewis married in 1956. She died of cancer in 1960. Lewis examines sorrow, anger, doubt, memory, and the difficulty of reconciling suffering with religious belief.

The work was initially published without Lewis’s name on the cover, but the pseudonym was eventually identified with him. It is not a conventional biography of Joy, nor is it a systematic theological treatise.

A Grief Observed is often read alongside Surprised by Joy, but the two books have different purposes. The earlier work is autobiographical; the later one is a compressed record of bereavement and spiritual questioning.