The Screwtape Letters

First published in book form in 1942, The Screwtape Letters is one of C. S. Lewis’s most ingenious and enduring works of Christian satire. Presented as a series of letters from Screwtape, a senior demon in the service of Hell, to his inexperienced nephew Wormwood, the book offers a devil’s-eye view of the struggle for a human soul. Wormwood has been assigned a young Englishman known as the Patient, and Screwtape’s advice concerns the subtle arts of temptation: encouraging vanity, exploiting resentment, distracting the mind from spiritual questions and turning even good intentions towards selfish ends. Through this unsettling inversion of moral perspective, Lewis transforms the familiar language of bureaucracy and professional correspondence into a sharp examination of human weakness.

Originally published in instalments during the Second World War, the work combines theological reflection with wit, psychological observation and the traditions of the epistolary novel. Lewis is less interested in spectacular evil than in the small compromises, habitual distractions and quiet evasions through which character is gradually shaped. Screwtape’s confident cynicism exposes the absurdity of pride while revealing how easily ordinary life can become a battleground of competing desires. Beneath the comedy lies a serious account of Christian morality, free will and the difficulty of sustaining attention to what matters most. Both a distinctive achievement in religious writing and a classic of twentieth-century satire, The Screwtape Letters remains striking for its ability to make spiritual questions feel immediate, unsettling and recognisably human.

From the book

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

— C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

On The Screwtape Letters

“C. S. Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day.”

— Peter Kreeft, philosopher and Christian apologist