Aslan is the fictional lion who serves as the central Christ-like figure in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.
Aslan is introduced in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as the true ruler of Narnia. His arrival is associated with the end of the White Witch’s winter, and his character combines kingly authority, compassion, wisdom, and overwhelming power.
Lewis described Aslan as an imaginative representation of Jesus Christ rather than a simple one-to-one allegory. In the story, Aslan gives his life to save Edmund Pevensie and returns to life, a sequence that echoes Christian accounts of sacrifice and resurrection. Lewis later emphasized that readers should imagine what Christ might be like in another world.
Aslan appears in all seven Chronicles of Narnia novels, although his role and visibility vary from book to book. His name resembles the Turkish word for “lion,” and the character’s identity is distinct from real-world lions or from other talking animals in the series.