The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce is fiction, but the fiction is a mere vehicle for discussing religious truths. The narrator walks through Hell to the bus station, where he takes a bus up to tour Heaven. In heaven he meets and talks to various Ghosts and Spirits, learning about the truth of heaven and hell, good and evil.

As a novel The Great Divorce is remarkably lacking in any action or strong plot. Most of the story consists if the narrator overhearing conversations between others who are visiting heaven, and between the Spirits of heaven talking to those visitors. But it is through these conversations that C. S. Lewis presents some of the more attractive false teachings of the early twentieth century. Certainly had Lewis written the book today rather than in the 1940s he would have emphasized some different false doctrines. But the truth of his book is no less for having been written half a century ago. The false philosophies in favor then are still powerful and influential today.

I recommend The Great Divorce.