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The Screwtape Letters is a work of Christian fiction by C. S. Lewis first published in 1941.
As an epistolary novel, it purports to be a collection of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape (an Under Secretary in the Lowerarchy), to his nephew Wormwood, an incompetent and very junior devil (we do not see Wormwood's letters to Screwtape). Screwtape gives advice to Wormwood on how to secure the damnation of a human, known as 'the Patient', in the face of 'The Enemy' (God).
After the first letter, the Patient converts to Christianity, and Wormwood is given a severe rebuking and threatened with the "usual penalties" at the House of Correction for Incompetent Tempters. Wormwood's aim is now to undermine the Patient's faith as well as to tempt him to explicit sins.
In the last letter, it emerges that the Patient dies during an air raid in London during the Second World War, and he goes to Heaven. Wormwood is punished for letting a soul 'slip through his fingers' by being given to Screwtape to eat.
While the Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, Lewis himself claimed that the book was both easy and distasteful to write. He vowed never to write a direct sequel for this reason, although he did write an essay entitled Screwtape proposes a toast, in which Screwtape gives an after-dinner speech to the College of Tempters.
Cartoonist Bill Watterson named the fictional first-grade teacher in his Calvin and Hobbes after the devil Wormwood.
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