An unfailingly honest and acutely perceptive observer of self, C. S. Lewis vividly recounts the spiritual journey that led him from a conventionally Christian childhood in Belfast to a youthful atheism and, finally, back to an assured Christianity. Lewis describes his early schooldays, his experiences in the trenches during World War I, and undergraduate life at Oxford - where he found himself drawn back to God. Yet it is perhaps the rational aspect of his conversion that makes Lewis's story so compelling, especially to contemporary readers. He is, most persuasively, a modern man who has thought his way to God. Initially published in 1955, Lewis's journey - his "surprise" - continues to be of first importance to admirers of his work and today, more than ever, to anyone concerned with the compatibility of the rational and the spiritual.