Surprised by Joy (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

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Surprised by Joy (C. S. Lewis Signature Classic)

By: C. S. Lewis

Narrated by: Peter Noble

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About this listen

For many years an atheist, C. S. Lewis vividly describes the spiritual quest that convinced him of the truth and reality of Christianity, in his famous autobiography.

“In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” Thus Lewis describes memorably the crisis of his conversion.

‘Surprised by Joy’ reveals both that crisis and its momentous conclusion that would determine the shape of Lewis’s entire life.

Art & Literature

Authors

Christian Living

Christianity

Viking

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Critic reviews

‘He is admirably equipped to write spiritual autobiography for the plain man, for his outstanding gift is clarity. You can take it at two levels, as straight autobiography, or as a kind of spiritual thriller, a detective’s probing of clue and motive that led up to his return to the Christianity he had lost in childhood.’ Isabel Quigley, Sunday Times

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C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy is interesting from two perspectives: first, that it is the closest Lewis came to writing a conventional autobiography; second, that it recounts the process that led to Lewis becoming a Christian, and so is an invaluable aid to his philosophical and theological writings. Sometimes these two perspectives seem to be jostling for position: the earlier portion of the book deals with Lewis's childhood in great detail (including a painful account of his schooldays), while the more formal autobiography peters out in the book's second half. The spiritual theme is always present, but less so in the book's first part (for example, we learn less than might be expected about Lewis's teenage shift to atheism). Perhaps the reason for this is the connecting thread: Lewis's concept of 'joy'. 'Joy' is an Augustinian longing that manifests itself first in creative fantasy, then in the Nordic myths before finally finding its true aim. Perhaps for this reason, the book comes to an abrupt halt once the pursuit of 'joy' brings Lewis back to the Christian faith. While Surprised by Joy may be somewhat unusual in form, it is no less valuable for anyone interested in C.S. Lewis. Peter Noble narrates ably, and manages passages of French with skill. His performance would have benefited from consultation with an Irish person, however, as his pronunciation of (admittedly difficult) Irish names – Cú Chulainn, Donegal – is confusingly wide of the mark.