He set out to be a great writer - to produce what he called popular "little books" - who appealed to everyone. He did not set out to be a popular Christian writer. What matters the most is that Lewis set out to write books that were good enough to be read by bright people - young and old - all across England and, then, around the world. That is not why all of Lewis' books remain in print and many remain bestsellers, decades after his death in 1963. The books can be read time after time by readers of all ages and that's precisely what millions of readers do, generation after generation.īut that is not why the 50th anniversary of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" has been celebrated as a major publishing event.
#Beyond the ordinary movie like narnia full
The books full of child-friendly Christian symbolism and parables, of course, but they also are laced with adult messages about politics, theology, science, economics and who knows what all. Narnia is created, redeemed and ruled by the great lion Aslan, the "son of the Great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea." The books are, of course, full of good stories that pull children through that mysterious wardrobe with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy and into a world populated with talking beasts, fawns, wizards, giants, dragons and legions of other wonderful and horrible creatures. Come back in 2050 or thereabouts and let's see if you can find new editions of Harry Potter books selling in the same rack as the bestsellers in a Tokyo bookstore. Lewis, the witty Oxford don who wrote "Mere Christianity," "Miracles," "The Problem of Pain," "A Grief Observed" and numerous other works of popular Christian apologetics.Īnd then there are the Narnia books, which remain a phenomenon in children's literature, selling millions of copies year after year even though it has now been half a century since Lewis finished the first volume. You can walk into just about any mainstream bookstore on Planet Earth and you will at least one shelf dedicated to C.S. Then one more turn and there was "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" and the other six volumes of "The Chronicles of Narnia."
I turned the display and there was the Oprah book club.
Sure enough, there were plenty of books by Stephen King, John Grisham and Tom Clancy.
But near the checkout desk I found a revolving display rack of English-language paperbacks. There wasn't much to look at, if you couldn't read Japanese. A steady stream of customers flowed right off the sidewalks into the long rows of Japanese newspapers, magazines, comics, computer books and novels.
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