Perelandra is a planet of pleasure, an unearthly, misty world of strange desires, sweet smells, and delicious tastes, where beasts are friendly and naked beauty is unashamed, a new Garden of Eden, where the story of the oldest temptation is enacted in an intriguingly new way. Here, in the second part of the trilogy, Dr. Ransom’s adventures continue against the backdrop of a religious allegory that, while it may seem quaint in its treatment of women today, nonetheless shows the capability of science to be an evil force tempting a ruler away from the path that has produced a paradisiacal kingdom.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Known as Jack from childhood, he developed an imaginative gift for storytelling at an early age. He was educated at Cherbourg House and Malvern College in England. He completed his schooling under the private tuition of his father’s retired headmaster living in Great Bookham, Surrey. From there he went on to Oxford. From 1955-1963 he was professor of medieval and renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. His conversion from atheism to Christian belief in 1931 resulted in a flow of outstanding theological books that championed Christian faith and made him famous in his own lifetime, but it was his fantasy books for children, The Chronicles of Narnia, that he became best known for.
