Surprised by Joy

This partial autobiography describes C.S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity, focusing less on historical detail and more on his spiritual journey. His primary aim was to identify and describe the events surrounding his discovery of a phenomenon he labeled "Joy"—a term used to translate the German concept of *Sehnsucht*, or intense longing. While Lewis recounts his early years and his time at Malvern College with a mix of amusement and pain, the book's principal theme remains this "Joy," which he describes as "stabs" of longing for something so high it defies words. The final chapters trace his evolution from atheism to theism and, ultimately, to Christianity. Though the title *Surprised by Joy* is an allusion to a Wordsworth poem, Lewis's friends later noted the prophetic coincidence of the name when he eventually married Joy Gresham years after the events described in the book.

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