Till We Have Faces
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First edition
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| Author | C. S. Lewis |
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| Cover artist | Biggs |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mythological novel |
| Publisher | Geoffrey Bles |
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Publication date
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1956 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 314 (Mass Market Paperback) |
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a 1956 novel by C. S. Lewis. It is a retelling of Cupid and Psyche, based on its telling in a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical. As a consequence, his retelling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions. This was his last novel, and he considered it his most mature, written in conjunction with his wife, Joy Davidman.
The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual, [pronounced Or'w'ahl] as an accusation against the gods. The story is set in the fictive kingdom of Glome, a primitive city-state whose people have occasional contact with civilized Hellenistic Greece. In the second part of the book, the narrator undergoes a change of mindset (Lewis would use the term conversion) and understands that her initial accusation was tainted by her own failings and shortcomings, and that the gods are lovingly present in humans' lives.
The story tells the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, from the perspective of Orual, Psyche's older sister.
It begins as the complaint of Orual as an old woman, who is bitter at the injustice of the gods. She has always been ugly, but after her mother dies and her father the King of Glome remarries, she gains a beautiful half-sister Istra, whom she loves as her own daughter, and who is known throughout the novel by the Greek version of her name, Psyche. Psyche is so beautiful that the people of Glome begin to offer sacrifices to her as to a goddess. The Priest of the goddess Ungit, a powerful figure in the kingdom, then informs the king that various plagues befalling the kingdom are a result of Ungit's jealousy, so Psyche is sent as a human sacrifice to the unseen "God of the Mountain" at the command of Ungit his mother. Orual plans to rescue Psyche but falls ill and is unable to prevent anything.
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Wikipedia