'C S Lewis first published A Grief Observed more than forty years ago, but his thoughts, his naked honesty about his feelings after the death of his wife Joy Davidman, who had come into his life only after decades of bachelorhood, are piercing and fresh as if he had just set them down today… C S Lewis had a sharp intellect, an endless curiosity, a gift for friendship, and an openness to truth. He urges us to let the heart go through its own seasons, find its own way, without platitudes or easy answers, but with honesty and faith.' - from the preface

C S LEWIS AND HUMAN SUFFERING seeks to understand the 'why' of human suffering through an evolution of Lewis's thought in three broad movements.

In his young adulthood, Lewis considered himself an atheist. As he himself notes in the 'Introduction' to The Problem of Pain, pain is not a problem (in the theological or philosophical sense) for the atheist, but only for one who is going to insist on the existence of God.

The second movement flows out of Lewis's midlife conversion experience, his return to 'joy'. His Christian commitment became so complete that he declared without hesitation that pain was 'God's megaphone' to rouse us out of complacency, or God's 'chisel' to perfect our form.

Then Joy Davidman entered and, all too soon, left his life. Lewis was shattered. The journey described in the little journal A Grief Observed is the third movement and the culmination of this evolution of understanding.