Which C.S. Lewis novel is narrated by a demon giving advice to his nephew Wormwood?

C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is narrated by a demon advising his nephew Wormwood.

The book was published in 1942 as a series of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to Wormwood, a younger tempter. Wormwood is assigned to influence a human “patient,” while Screwtape offers tactical advice about temptation, distraction, pride, and spiritual habits.

Lewis presents the advice ironically: the demons describe moral failure as success and spiritual growth as a threat. This reversal lets the book examine human behavior without presenting the narrator as a trustworthy moral guide. The work is therefore a satirical religious fiction rather than a conventional novel with an ordinary human narrator.

The book began as a series of pieces that Lewis wrote during World War II. Its epistolary structure means that readers encounter the story through correspondence rather than through scenes narrated directly by the patient. Lewis later added a final piece, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” which was published separately before being included with the letters in some editions.