Which C.S. Lewis work is a fictional account of a patient’s temptation by a senior demon?

The Screwtape Letters is a fictional account of a patient’s temptation by a senior demon.

C.S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters in book form in 1942. It consists of letters from Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood, who is assigned to tempt a human referred to as “the Patient.”

The epistolary structure lets Lewis present moral and spiritual observations through an inverted viewpoint. Screwtape’s advice is intended to help evil, but its self-serving logic reveals how distraction, vanity, resentment, and gradual compromise can affect human behavior.

Lewis dedicated the book to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien. The work became one of Lewis’s most popular theological writings, although its satirical voice makes it different from a conventional treatise. Lewis later wrote that the book’s demonic perspective became unpleasant to sustain while he was composing it.