Screwtape is the senior demon who writes the letters in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. He addresses advice to his inexperienced nephew, Wormwood, about tempting a human patient.
The book is structured as a series of fictional letters rather than as a conventional narrative. Lewis uses the demonic viewpoint ironically: the demons’ advice exposes spiritual pride, distraction, resentment, and self-deception instead of endorsing them.
The Screwtape Letters was first published in book form in 1942. Lewis had originally written the material during the Second World War, when moral and religious questions were especially prominent in public discussion.
Wormwood is the junior demon receiving the instructions, so he is not the letter writer. The unusual format makes the title character’s name easy to remember, while also creating the book’s central dramatic device: readers must infer the intended moral lessons from the demons’ plans.