Which C.S. Lewis book retells the Cupid and Psyche myth from Queen Orual’s viewpoint?

Till We Have Faces retells the Cupid and Psyche myth from Queen Orual’s viewpoint.

Published in 1956, the novel presents Orual as the narrator and later queen of the fictional kingdom of Glome. Her half-sister Psyche is the figure whose beauty and mysterious experiences echo the ancient Psyche of classical mythology. Orual’s account is shaped by grief, resentment, love, and her struggle to understand the gods.

Lewis drew particularly on the Cupid and Psyche story associated with Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, also called The Golden Ass. Rather than simply reproducing the classical plot, he uses the retelling to explore how people distort experience through self-interest and how honest self-knowledge can be painful.

The perspective is one reason the book stands apart from Lewis’s better-known fantasy. It is an adult literary novel with mythological foundations, and its title comes from the idea that human beings must confront their true selves before they can speak honestly.