Perelandra is the C.S. Lewis novel featuring the fictional world of Perelandra, also called Venus.
Published in 1943, Perelandra is the second book of Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Elwin Ransom, the protagonist of the first novel, travels to the planet Venus, whose inhabitants call it Perelandra. There he encounters a newly created world and becomes involved in a struggle over temptation, obedience, and the future of its civilization.
The novel draws on the biblical story of the temptation in Eden, but it does not simply retell Genesis. Lewis constructs an aquatic, richly imagined planetary environment with floating islands and a distinctive ecology. The setting allows him to explore how moral choices might unfold in a world that has not yet experienced humanity’s fall.
The trilogy’s other novels are Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength. Perelandra is sometimes confused with Lewis’s retelling of Cupid and Psyche, Till We Have Faces, but the two books belong to different fictional worlds and literary projects.