Arguably the most influential Christian writer of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis founded his literary reputation on the now classic critical work The Allegory of Love. Within the next five years he would garner international acclaim as the author of The Screwtape Letters and Out of the Silent Planet, the first of three science fiction novels that owe much to his dynamic friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien. In 1950, with the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he would win the hearts of children worldwide. Yet Clive Staples Lewis's path to renown not only as a groundbreaking literary critic, novelist, and Christian theologian was an intellectual and emotionally chaotic one, as Michael White reveals in this probing new biography. He follows the young Lewis, a nervous man profoundly depressed by the death of his mother, in a spiritually tormented course that would take him through the trenches of World War I to the upper ranks of English letters. White cleverly deconstructs Lewis's novels and religious works to reveal the frequently tormented soul and imagination from they sprung. Most importantly, he delves into the mythos that has long surrounded Lewis and rediscovers the man beneath.