Which C.S. Lewis work uses the fictional character Orual as its narrator?

The story behind the answer

Till We Have Faces uses the fictional character Orual as its narrator.

Orual is the central voice of Lewis’s 1956 novel Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. She is the eldest daughter of the king of Glome and later becomes queen. Her account shapes the reader’s understanding of her family, her sister Psyche, and the mysterious divine forces surrounding them.

The first part is presented as Orual’s extended accusation against the gods. A second part revisits and reframes her understanding, giving the novel its movement from grievance toward self-recognition.

Orual is not a figure from Lewis’s Narnia series. She belongs to his retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, adapted from the classical tradition associated with Apuleius. The unusual first-person structure is one reason the novel stands apart from Lewis’s more familiar allegorical and children’s fiction.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Oct. 2026

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