The Screwtape Letters
 | HarperAudio, 2002, Audio CD Customer Rating: 370 reviews Recommend |
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Now available unabridged on cassette and CD — C.S. Lewis' classic Screwtape Letters — the engaging correspondence between two devils.
Read by Joss Ackland.
Who among us has never wondered if there might not really be a tempter sitting on our shoulders or dogging our steps? C.S. Lewis dispels all doubts. In The Screwtape Letters, one of his bestselling works, we are made privy to the instructional correspondence between a senior demon, Screwtape, and his wannabe diabolical nephew Wormwood. As mentor, Screwtape coaches Wormwood in the finer points, tempting his "patient" away from God.
Each letter is a masterpiece of reverse theology, giving the reader an inside look at the thinking and means of temptation. Tempters, according to Lewis, have two motives: the first is fear of punishment, the second a hunger to consume or dominate other beings. On the other hand, the goal of the Creator is to woo us unto himself or to transform us through his love from "tools into servants and servants into sons." It is the dichotomy between being consumed and subsumed completely into another's identity or being liberated to be utterly ourselves that Lewis explores with his razor-sharp insight and wit.
The most brilliant feature of The Screwtape Letters may be likening hell to a bureaucracy in which "everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." We all understand bureaucracies, be it the Department of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, or one of our own making. So we each understand the temptations that slowly lure us into hell. If you've never read Lewis, The Screwtape Letters is a great place to start. And if you know Lewis, but haven't read this, you've missed one of his core writings. — Patricia Klein
Title: The Screwtape Letters
Sales Rank: 51824 in Books
Author: C. S. Lewis
Creator: Joss Ackland
Publisher: HarperAudio, Unabridged edition, 2002-10-01, Audio CD, ISBN: 0060093668
Package Dimensions: 5.7 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches, 0.35 pounds
- A theological satrical masterpiece, rich in consolation, and a number of belly laughs
- I often say that almost all of my theology comes from reading "The Narnia Suite," which I read for the first time at the age of eight, and more than a dozen times thereafter. I was particularly taken with The Last Battle, in which some people are very surprised indeed to learn that those they thought wouldn't be admitted into Aslan's… More reviews
- Screwtape Letters
- An excellent book which shows how the "other side" thinks. Great writing! One of my favorites!… More reviews
- Agree with Most Helpful Critical Review
- I was hoping this version could replace my paperback copy; however, without the C.S. Lewis preface to the 1961 edition it is incomplete. More reviews
- Funny (and Serious) as Hell !
- Like all Lewis' works, this book is full of insights into human life - into those aspects which are often too big and obvious for us to notice. These insights are given us directly from the enemy through the writings of a devil named Screwtape. He writes to his nephew (a novice tempter devil) about his nephew's "patient," a human struggling with… More reviews
- Enlightening read for committed (and thinking) Christians
- I don't know how well this great book translates to agnostic readers, but for me it was a very enlightening and concrete way to understand what it means to try to be a good man in a world of temptation.
In keeping with the time period, I believe it was Winston Churchill who said "All evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing". In the Screwtape Letters… More reviews
