Mortality Hardcover - 2012

Media reviews

“Vivid, heart-wrenching and haunting – messages in a bottle tossed from the deck of a sinking ship as its captain, reeling n agony and fighting through the fog of morphine, struggles to keep his engines going.”
—New York Times
 
“There is courage on every page, of course, for Hitchens was a very brave man.”
—Globe and Mail
 
“Reading Mortality as a book, these essays are less dispatches from the land of malady than they are an exploration of, as the title would indicate, mortality itself. The fact of Hitchens’ death colours every skilfully constructed sentence, every carefully turned phrase, and transforms the essays from a simple chronicle to a brave, unflinching confrontation with the inevitable end. . . . Hitchens’ writing has always been brave and confrontational, and his illness – his dying – did nothing to blunt his edge. [A] deeply personal book.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
 
“[This is] why we read him, watching him burn less like a hard, gemlike flame (too exquisite for Hitchens) and more like a roaring, hissing bonfire. In Mortality the bonfire is starting collapse on itself, as bonfires do. Lots of sparks flying up into the night, however.”
—Wall Street Journal
 
“Leave it to one of our sharpest minds to be so steadfast under the gun. . . . Mortality is the opposite of a call for sympathy. It’s pure insight and it’s pure Hitch: cranky, unsentimental, dead on.”
—Toronto Star
 
“Sure, Hitchens wrote in spite of death, in spite of the pain, because he had to, which in itself is awesome testament to will and passion. But he had also reconciled the brutal internal struggles between meaning and meaninglessness that must come with dying, and emerged with writing that sung beautifully. The deftness, the discipline, and the grace of that achievement should inspire us all.”
—Brisbane Times
 
“There’s something satisfying, even elegant, about this short book.”
—Washington Post

“Hitchens’s powerful voice compels us to consider carefully the small measures by which we live every day and to cherish them.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Christopher Hitchens is the greatest living essayist in the English language." 
—Christopher Buckley

"If Hitchens didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to invent him." 
—Ian McEwan

"Few writers can match Hitchens' cerebral pyrotechnics. Fewer still can emulate his punch as an intellectual character assassin. It is hard not to admire the sheer virtuosity of his prose. . . . With Hitchens one simply goes along for the ride. The destination hardly matters." 
—Financial Times