Scewtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis

I have never read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, but when I saw that Focus on The Family was dramatizing the book, and it was available for review, I decided to go for it.


A note about these dramatizations: Focus on the Family has dramatized several books - the whole Chronicles of Narnia series, Ben Hur, The Father Gilbert Mysteries, and more. Paul McCusker produces them, and he does a great job. These are not simply books on CD. There are sound effects, different voices - they call it a movie for your mind, and that is pretty much what it is.


The Screwtape Letters come from the imagination of C.S. Lewis. They are imaginary letters between a senior, retired demon, to a younger demon in training. The younger demon has his "patient" - a young man he is in charge of hounding, discouraging, tempting - doing h

is best to make sure the man misses Heaven. The senior demon gives him advice on how best to accomplish that.



The book was in letter form, but for the dramatization, they go mostly for interaction between the two demons, along with conversation between the subject of their attention and his friends.


Even though this is C.S. Lewis' ideas, it is still frightening and sobering to realize that the devil is trying to take us all down, and that his methods are many and devious. Though the story has humorous moments, I was left with the sobering realization that Satan indeed wants all of us to fail at serving God, and will do whatever he can to destroy us.

This dramatized version has four audio CDs, totaling about four hours in length. It includes songs inspired by the book, and some additional audio of C.S. Lewis' words. Also included is a DVD that has 5.1 surround version of the entire audio on it, the making of the dramatization, and some other features.


Though somewhat creepy at times, I recommend either reading the book, or listening to the CDs. We all need to be more aware of the battle we are in, and this may help us realize that more.