Mortality

English language

Published March 8, 2012

ISBN:
978-1-84887-921-8
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5 stars (1 review)

Mortality is a 2012, posthumously published book by Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens. It comprises seven essays which first appeared in Vanity Fair concerning his struggle with esophageal cancer, with which he was diagnosed during his 2010 book tour and which killed him in December 2011. An eighth chapter consisting of unfinished "fragmentary jottings", a foreword by Graydon Carter (Hitchens' Vanity Fair editor) and an afterword by Carol Blue (Hitchens' widow), are also included in the publication.

3 editions

Review of 'Mortality' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"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. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate."

An amazing book from Hitchens, well written and easily read, impossible to forget. It's a short book, yet it benefits from a slow reading. There is plenty of food for thought on the process of dying, I'd strongly recommend this book. Carol, his wife, closes out the book with an incredibly sad final chapter.

Hitchens died before the end.

Don't we all, I suppose.

"Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you - free."
- Kinglsey Amis