The Screwtape Letters

By: C. S. Lewis

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below". At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise old Devil to his nephew, Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation, and triumph over it, ever written.

(P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

Audie Award Finalist, Inspirational/Spiritual, 2007

Known for The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis wrote the wittiest defense of Christianity ever. Humorist John Cleese won AudioFile Earphones for his 1999 enactment of the correspondence between two devils plotting the damnation of one man's soul. Ralph Cosham is a slightly less demented fiend, but the text itself remains hilarious.... Cosham's organ-like voice also lends resonance.... This is, therefore, the best audio ever spoken of the funniest defense of Christianity ever written." (AudioFile magazine)

"Lewis' satire is a Christian classic....[his] take on human nature is as on-target as it was when the letters were first published in 1941." (Library Journal)

Christian reverse psychology!

Great book! I forms us how the enemy plan against us as tempters..tempers... ..

Great read!!

Was so pulled into the carrer like work the antagonists used the human. And this is for everyone on earth that share the tempter’s demise. A really great read made me rethink myself and my faith and my thoughts while reading it. Like I was on the outside looking in the innermost work.

Excellent

A great listen for all . It really made me think and I enjoyed the toast at the end .

Mind blowingly awesome’m

I had heard of this book all of my life and had never sat down long enough to read it. Loved hearing it through Audible and highly, highly recommend it!

If all Christians could read/listen one “fiction“ book…

At 56, in my relatively new and strong re-conversion to Christianity (from milk toast Christianity, and then agnosticism), I have now read a couple dozen books by Tozer and other excellent Christian guides (including Lewis, the author of this). Most have contributed mightily, thank God, to my deep-felt sense of the power God working for me and in and for the world.

Now, this book comes on my radar with a title that is off-putting to me… doesn’t sound like it’ll be fun, edifying, etc., (think “The Princess Bride”… turned off by the title, but ended up watching the movie a zillion times), but turns out to be, in my opinion, a singular masterpiece. A real find. It feels shallow to say it must be divinely inspired… it feels like God took Lewis’ hand and wrote it for him… for us! Satan must absolutely hate it beyond what words can express!!

Because it is written by a scholarly, well-educated writer, you might want to keep your dictionary close, so you don’t glaze over anything and loose important context.

SUPER FUN TO LISTEN TO!

Screwtape is so cunning and evil… one can understand why Satan promoted him to his high rank. His nephew, just as evil but a total neophyte, can’t quite get it, how to really see just about ANY moment in a persons life, as an opportunity to send him off track, and move him one step closer to hell. As I listened to this, I gave thanks to God over and over and over for showing me my sins… makes one relieved (gross understatement) that one has our absolutely magnificent AND FORGIVING God looking out for us.

the “…Toast” book at the end, which was written over 20 years later, although not as fun as the main book, is a perfect reflection by Screwtape on all the hard work and mistakes of the evil committee for the recent past, and gives one a sense of the prophetic as it relates to all the evil tactics of the humans who have all but completely sold their precious soles to Satan, and screwed up the world and our once-great USA. God help them, and help us all. Never underestimate the enemy’s desire to harvest and devour the world of man. God will win The War, but you sure as hell want to be in His camp!!

God Bless.

Guard against evil.

Embrace Love.

Get the book!

Flawless execution, dynamic and captivating.

Masterful storytelling, know your enemy through this period peice that predictive of current events.

Loved listening to this classic

I really enjoyed listening to this classic of CS Lewis. I read the book many years ago without the last chapter, and I loved it as well. It is a great theological masterpiece as well as being greatly entertaining for the Christian world. I noticed in the last chapter that Lewis died on the same day that JFK was assassinated. I believe his death could have been the major story of the day had it not been overshadowed by the other. His was a gift that will live far into the future.

Profound Satire, Brilliantly Performed

The significance of this timeless work by C.S. Lewis simply can't be understated. While a work of fiction, the layers of nuance and thoughtfulness that underpin its serious, but also seriously humorous in places prose offer profound insight for people in any age . . . especially ours . . . which is characterized by a degree of abject insanity and that has most if not all spiritually minded folk certain that dark forces are at harder at work than ever before.

There's an old saying that goes something like, "The Devil's greatest trick was getting people to think he doesn't exist."
Well, that saying should be adapted to say "The Devil's greatest trick was getting Christians who KNOW he exists to seldom if ever think about him and his minions at all."

The rampant apostasy in the church today . . . the bizarre fixation of prominent evangelical organizations like the Gospel Coalition of insisting in the face of unprecedented cultural decline and all-out war being waged on traditional Christianity that the chief end of the Christian man is to be winsome . . . the denial of basic Christian doctrines that have been undisputed since the very advent of organized Christianity . . . the appalling levels of indifference amongst the laity to epidemic levels of corruption in western governments and child sex trafficking . . . all while thinking the church is not just fine, but probably better than it's ever been (especially since we learned better than to think too much of those stodgy old Puritans, reformers, and all the saints who have gone before, and subject their legacies to the dictates of postmodern "progressivism") defy any sort of logic whatsoever.

Until you read/listen to The Screwtape Letters; brilliantly read, in this instance by Ralph Cosham.

Not because it tells us authoritatively how all of this came to be. Not because it informs us of the REAL way Demons work. No one can know exactly how for certain, of course.
But because it gives us fuel for the imagination. Which is what people in this day and age desperately need. A little bit of imagination. Imagination that allows them to fathom to any degree possible what interdimensional beings who hate us with a seething passion, who want to be you, want to destroy you, do not sleep, and have millenia of collected experience in actively screwing humanity over and tormenting people into ruining themselves might be up to at any given moment of any given day.

Though Lewis imagines what that might be like in a somewhat lighthearted way, with there even being a moment or two of levity in what could otherwise be a very unsettling read, the earnestness with which he characterizes Uncle Screwtape cannot help but get the reader thinking about a subject that people these days have a woeful tendency to either give entirely too much or entirely too little of their attention to.

This story should be required reading for Christians in particular, and the performance thereof by the narrator is of a level of excellence that does the work justice in more than ample supply.

CS Lewis never disappoints

While Lewis and I do not hold to the same precise theology, he makes his points in such a way through Screwtape that I'm not sure could have been done in another voice. I especially appreciated the note from Lewis between the letters and the toast at the end.
Great performance by the narrator, as well.

brilliant

absolutely brilliant!!!! this will be a periodical for me for sure. I'm thrilled that I decided to listen after some recommendations years back. it's a wonderful piece of literature for the Christian.