"Clive Staples Lewis' path to renown as a groundbreaking literary critic, novelist, and Christian theologian was an intellectually and emotionally chaotic one, as Michael White reveals in this new biography. He follows the young Lewis, a nervous man profoundly depressed by the death of his mother, in a spiritually treacherous course that would take him through the trenches of World War I to the upper ranks of English literature. White deconstructs Lewis' novels and religious works to reveal the frequently tormented soul and imagination from which they sprung. Equally important, he delves into the mythos surrounding Lewis and rediscovers the man beneath."--Jacket