C.S. Lewis joined the human race when his wife, Joy Gresham, died of cancer. Lewis, the Oxford don whose Christian apologetics make it seem like he's got an answer for everything, experienced crushing doubt for the first time after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed contains his epigrammatic reflections on that period: "Your bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high," Lewis writes. "Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is the book that inspired the film Shadowlands, but it is more wrenching, more revelatory, and more real than the movie. It is a beautiful and unflinchingly honest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings. --Michael Joseph Gross

FROM OUR EDITORS

Written as he mourned the loss of his wife, C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed is an elegant and honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith. This intensely personal memoir has helped countless others find courage and hope.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Written after his wife's tragic death as a way of surviving the "mad midnight moment," A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains his concise, genuine reflections on that period: "Nothing will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself." This is a beautiful and unflinchingly homest record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.

About the AuthorClive Staples Lewis, was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1898. As a child, he was fascinated by the fairy tales, myths, and ancient legends recounted to him by his Irish nurse. The image of a faun carrying parcels and an umbrella in a snowy wood came to him when he was sixteen. Many years later, the faun was joined by an evil queen and a magnificient lion. Their story became The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. Six further Chronicles of Narnia followed, and the final title, The Last Battle, was awarded the United Kingdom's prestigious Carnegie Award.

Lewis was Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, where he remained until his death in 1963. He wrote numerous books of literary criticism and on Christianity, the best-knowing being The Screwtape Letters, as well asfour novels for adults. The seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia were his only works for children.

FROM THE CRITICS

John Updike