When four children are evacuated from London during World War II, they find themselves in the mysterious home of Professor Digory Kirke. Told never to disturb the professor, they spend one rainy day playing hide-and-seek in the ancient, rambling house. Lucy, the youngest, decides to hide in the professor's old wardrobe.

What she soon discovers is that the wardrobe conceals the entrance to Narnia, a magical land whose creatures live under a curse.

At first none of the other children believe Lucy's story of fauns and talking beavers, but soon they too stumble through the wardrobe door, unaware of the fact that their very presence is dangerous to their new Narnian friends. For a prophecy has foretold the appearance of four children who will join with the great lion Aslan to defeat the White Witch and free the land from its evil wintry embrace.

Featured on TIME magazine's list of 100 Best English-Language Novels, and translated into 47 different languages around the world, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the doorway through which most readers enter the land of Narnia. The first book published in the series, it can stand alone as a masterpiece of children's fantasy literature, or serve as an invitation to travel through all the alternate realities of C.S. Lewis's imagination.