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Mortality Hardcover – September 4, 2012

by Christopher Hitchens (Author)

4.5 3,933 ratings

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On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for superior work even in extremis.

Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer, Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion, preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and compels him to grapple with the enigma of death.

Mortality is the exemplary story of one man's refusal to cower in the face of the unknown, as well as a searching look at the human predicament. Crisp and vivid, veined throughout with penetrating intelligence, Hitchens's testament is a courageous and lucid work of literature, an affirmation of the dignity and worth of man.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2012: Curious and prolific to the end, combative writer Christopher Hitchens leaves us with a posthumously published analysis of his dying days. Mortality is the anti–Last Lecture: Stripping away semantics and sentimentality, Hitchens treats his cancer as he would any other topic--with dogged inquisitiveness and brutal honesty. Which makes it all the more poignant when he begins losing his voice, his "freedom of speech," and sinks deeper into his "year of living dyingly." Funny, smart, irreverent, and surprisingly moving, this lucid, unflinching end-of-life journey through "Tumorville" is brave and powerful stuff. The unfinished jottings that comprise the final pages are a heartbreaking display of a mind that never stopped till the very end. --Neal Thompson

From Bookforum

Mortality is an odd little book, neither fully a cancer memoir nor a meditation on the meanings we attribute to the disease . . . More honestly ironic, more like the Hitchens of old, before the religion wars and the war on terror and the gonzo grandstanding. It is Mortality at its most generous and most human: just another man dying, making a joke and telling a story. —Jeff Sharlet

Review

"Dealing unflinchingly with bodily ravagement, reflecting on life's beauty and remaining rakish about his ideological foes, Hitchens proves that great writers are truly immortal." (People, 4-star review )

"Remarkable . . . The book's power lies in its simplicity, in its straightforward, intelligent documenting, its startling refusal of showiness or melodrama or grandeur....The great polemicist, essayist, conversationalist, provocateur, arguer, has done something extraordinary in this book. He has created yet another style, another mode, another way of being and thinking and dreaming, on his death bed; he has written in many ways an un-Hitchens-like book, eluding proclamations, resolutions, mastery, wit, at-easeness with opinion, in favor of unnerving directness, of harrowing documentation. He has allowed his dismantled confidence, his undoing to breathe, and to live in the pages, in a way that is startling and new and an achievement unlike his others, different in kind, yet equally ambitious and relentlessly honest." (Slate.com Katie Roiphe )

"Like virtually everything he wrote over his long, distinguished career, diamond-hard and brilliant . . .vivid, heart-wrenching and haunting - messages in a bottle tossed from the deck of a sinking ship as its captain, reeling in agony and fighting through the fog of morphine, struggles to keep his engines going . . . a final, defiant, and well-reasoned defense of his non-God-fearingness . . . It is, however, sobering and grief-inducing to read this brave and harrowing account of his 'year of living dyingly' in the grip of an alien that succeeded where none of his debate opponents had in bringing him down." (New York Times Book Review Christopher Buckley )

"This trenchant, sassy, tragically posthumous little black book earns a proud spot on the end-of-life shelf, along with Julian Barnes' Nothing to Be Frightened Of, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index, Saul Bellow's Ravelstein, and Philip Roth's Everyman and Exit Ghost, to name just a few." (NPR.org )

"A book driven by his desire to look death squarely in the face and provoked by detractors who were certain he would turn to religion when confronted with it. He did not... [MORTALITY is] full of humility, a humility worthy of kings." (Newsday )

"The melancholy irony of 'Mortality' is that it gave our best essayist - I can't think of someone who comes even close - the chance to grapple with the most intractable subject, to wrestle with the angel of death in a battle we will all have to lose at one time or another.....The voice is gone. The words remain." (The New York Daily News )

"These essays are brave and fitting final words from a writer at the end of his journey." (Bookpage )

"There are no clever pitches to diminish the horror vacui of oblivion. He offers no self-pity or special pleading. The book is tough-minded . . . poignant, but the poignancy is ours, not his." (Wall Street Journal )

"Mortality is a crash course in lived philosophy....bracing." (Salon )

"Stark and powerful... Hitchens's powerful voice compels us to consider carefully the small measures by which we live every day and to cherish them." (Publisher's Weekly (Starred) )

"A jovially combative riposte to anyone who thought that death would silence master controversialist Hitchens." (Kirkus Reviews (Starred) )

"Mortality, the final book by Christopher Hitchens, the Anglo-American essayist, reporter, devout atheist and all-around intellectual troublemaker, won't be shelved in the travel section. But in a sense that's where it belongs, along with the best of the literary travel writers. Think George Orwell, one of Hitchens' heroes....Few writers wrote sharper sentences or treated words with more respect." (USA Today, "The 25 Big Books of Fall" )

"Unsparingly blunt, rhetorically suave . . . It's rare that someone so powerfully writes of such deep connections between the death of intellectual ability and the decay of the body." (Boston Globe )

"To the end, he produces sentences of startling beauty and precision . . . One of our best is gone, yet "Mortality" is a powerful and moving final utterance." (San Francisco Chronicle )

"Mortality is not just for Hitchens' fans, but for all.... With almost unimaginable clarity, grace and wit, even for the master wordsmith we had grown used to. We see here a very warm and thoughtful human being. Poignant and deeply personal thoughts on the art of writing and the heartbreak of losing his unmistakable speaking voice during the course of treatment....The furthest thing from grim, Mortality is a gift. Not just from Christopher, but from Carol as well. Do pick it up." (Huffington Post )

About the Author

Christopher Hitchens was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair,Slate, and the Atlantic, and the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and George Orwell. He also wrote the international bestsellers god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitch-22: A Memoir, and Arguably. He died in December 2011.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Twelve; 1st edition (September 4, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 128 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1455502758
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1455502752
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.85 x 8.9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #41,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Sociology of Death (Books)
- #1,402 in Memoirs (Books)
- #2,864 in Reference (Books)

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4.5 3,933 ratings

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Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was the author of Letters to a Young Contrarian, and the bestseller No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, The Atlantic Monthly and Slate, Hitchens also wrote for The Weekly Standard, The National Review, and The Independent, and appeared on The Daily Show, Charlie Rose, The Chris Matthew's Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and C-Span's Washington Journal. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

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D. Summerfield

Hitchens fans have a last word to savor

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2012

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This brief book is mostly a compilation of essays that Christopher Hitchens wrote in the last nineteen months of his life after he was diagnosed with cancer. A prolific writer, journalist and speaker, Hitchens' essays were always what I turned to first in both the online magazine Slate, and in Vanity Fair magazine. What I find most fascinating about these essays is that Hitchens is as opinionated and brilliant as ever, despite the increasing pain and disability brought on by his disease. He questioned everything, from how society deals with cancer (referring to "battling" the disease in a way never referred to with heart or kidney disease), to his anguish at the realization of "lasts" in his life which most of us never have to confront (the last time he traveled to his native England, the movies he would not see and books he would not read, the weddings of his children he would not attend.)

This book is witty and wry. He recounts conversations with well-meaning fans, friends and family which annoy him. He comments on his empathy for the medical personnel who find doing their jobs harder as his body shuts down and even finding a vein to stick becomes an ordeal. He tries to tell his readers what the process of dying means, even as he holds out hope that the experimental medical treatments he undergoes may work. Hitchens is blunt about his journey, and he does not shy away from acknowledging points of view which differ from his own. An outspoken critic of organized religion and religious dogma, Hitchens nevertheless writes about doubt and about those he admires who do not share his philosophies.

As another reviewer pointed out, one of the most interesting chapters is the last one which is comprised of notes for a book about his cancer journey which he did not live to write. Glimpsing the creative process of a writer like Hitchens is a gift. The forward by his friend, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, and the afterword by his wife, writer Carol Blue, provide further insight into the mind of this fascinating man.

This edition of the book, published by TwelveBooks, with a simple black dustjacket, a photo of Hitchens on the back, and printed on high-quality paper, is quite wonderful for the reader/collector.

Highly recommended.

14 people found this helpful

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Steve C.

A Story of Courage and Fortitude

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2024

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This story is about the challenges of cancer and chemotherapy. Despite all of the hardships involved, it is a story about the determination to make every day count. Inspiring!

One person found this helpful

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Vox

DOES NOT GET BETTER THAN THIS

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2023

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Sadly, Christopher passed before this book was published but his Wife included very sentimental and astounding snip-its of information he wrote, randomly, before he died - to show his mindset and dedication as an anti-theist and a man who valued his life and readers. The book is brief and I read it from cover to cover with great interest and observation. His bravery towards facing his own mortality is inspiring and he makes every word count, per usual. His legacy remain alive, he is admired, thanked and missed. A must have for every Hitchens comrade. Often the smartest man in the room, even after leaving it. RIP.

5 people found this helpful

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Robert L. Hutton

A Good Read on a Hard Subject

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2017

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In his remarkable book Mortality, Christopher Hitchens wrote a dispassionate, clear, frightening and inspiring account of his decline toward death from esophageal cancer. His writing brings the reader into his hotel room when he was first struck down. He takes us along as the emergency services people took him in a “. . . very gentle and firm deportation . . . from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.” He never whines or seeks pity. “I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline.” He went on to say “I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion.” His calm stoicism in the face of the worst diagnosis followed by the worst kind of suffering from treatments, rather than being terrifying and depressing is somehow comforting. Listening to the audio of the book when I was going through a personal crisis made me feel like I was facing death with a brother in arms who made me feel as the protagonist in Abba’s “Fernando” must have felt when “there was something in the air that night”—like whatever may come I’m with the right person at the right time and all is well.
Books about dying are hardly upbeat, but Hitchens kept his humor throughout the ordeal and never lost his famous ability for clarity and engaging the reader. A good read on a hard subject.

22 people found this helpful

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Rodrigo Álvarez

Grande y elocuente

Reviewed in Mexico on September 20, 2022

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Estoicismo y no pedazos. Bárbaro, brutal. El Hitch impuso un estándar muy alto sobre como afrontar la muerte como ateo.

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Manjunath

Objective look at death!

Reviewed in India on June 3, 2023

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This is probably one of the best end times writing one can hope to read, devoid any sentimentality, self pity and unnecessary philosophizing. In these writings death is reduced to what it is in bare minimum and experienced and recorded as it happened by a sharp mind.

Alessandro Pergola

Very Interesting

Reviewed in Italy on July 23, 2018

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Hitchens is a neat earthquake of words, concepts with no exceptions! No rambling, only punches and recoils at the horizon.

Jovanna

He may have lost his voice, but he never lost his words!

Reviewed in Germany on December 22, 2017

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Christopher Hitchens was a unique man in every way. It was easy for me to fall in love with his way of words and his biting comments, filled with decadence and smugness.

This book is Hitchens. While it may be thin and written shortly before his death, it is filled with his typical wit and Hitchen's unique talent to mesmerize his readers with his words.

A great book, which barely captures the true genius of Hitchens.

Especially touching was the end, which had been written by his wife. It allows the reader a glance at the private Christopher Hitchens, who stayed himself even at the bitter end.

One person found this helpful

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Lina Wong

Powerful account pf illness and mortality

Reviewed in Australia on July 14, 2019

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Hitchens never shies from the truth, even in this most intimate and personal moment.

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