Which C.S. Lewis book retells the story of his wife’s death and grief?

A Grief Observed retells C.S. Lewis’s experience of grief after his wife’s death.

The book was published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. It consists of short, intensely personal reflections written after Joy Davidman died of cancer in 1960. Lewis examines sorrow, anger, doubt, memory, and the strain bereavement placed on his religious convictions.

The pseudonym initially meant that many readers did not know Lewis had written the work. The book was later published under his own name, and it became one of his most widely read accounts of mourning. It is not a conventional biography of Davidman or a continuous narrative of their marriage.

A common mix-up is The Problem of Pain, which Lewis published in 1940 as a theological discussion of suffering. A Grief Observed is later, personal, and rooted in the death of Davidman rather than written as a general apologetic argument.