Mortality by Christopher Hitchens Review

From Goodreads:

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.

My Review:

This is one of those books that I will be thinking about for a very long time.   It is short, I finished it in a couple of hours, but there is so much included in it about life, death, humanity, family, and Hitchen's personal views that it is amazing to me how  so much was covered  in so few pages.

I have had close family members die from cancer so I have first hand experience in how difficult dealing with cancer can be, but Hitchens view of cancer from the one actually dealing with the disease gave me a whole new sense of how terrible the diagnosis and treatments can be.  Hitchens holds nothing back and with brutal honesty talks of dealing with the medicines and procedures and also the changes in the relationships he has with those around him.  I learned a lot from this book and appreciated the honesty through all of the essays included.

The last chapter was the most important in the book I thought.  It was not a complete essay but fragments and thoughts of Hitchens last days.  It gives an intimate look into his thoughts and how he put his essays together.  It is a moving and emotional ending to the book.  

My Rating:  5 stars out of 5



Mortality