Book Description
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.
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
Review
"Nothing sharpened Christopher Hitchens' mind like Cancer. He
wrote the best, most piercing, most clarifying prose of his career as he
faced down the specter of his own demise. As he dealt with fatigue and
nausea, with the anger, disgust and frustration that must accompany what
he knew was a death sentence, Hitch poured it all into words as
painfully honest as they were hilarious." (Sharon Waxman, TheWrap.com )
"Among the many things that made Hitchens unique was his precision of thought and expression. What made him rare were his courage and tenacity. He was fearless in the field and relentless in his defense of the defenseless with that mightiest of swords--his pen. Judging from his final essays, he was also fearless in the fact of death." (Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post )
"I have no doubt that Christopher Hitchens will have an afterlife. As one of the most original and provocative writers of his generation, his words will continue to mesmerize, incite, confound, and entertain." (Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, FoxNews.com )
"His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater's famous phrase, he burned 'with this hard gem-like flame.'Right to the end." (Ian McEwan )
"A seeker of truth to the end, and a deservedly legendary witness against the hypocrisy of the ever-sactimonious establishment. What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of the powerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state, or a claim to the ear of the divine." (Robert Scheer, TruthDig )
"Reading and responding to the Hitch is ceaselessly inspiring and seldom less than exhilarating. More, it is an instigatory experience: it compels you to get involved more deeply with the world around and inside you. Reading any worthwhile writer is an act of celebration, a shared reaction to the act of creation. More, it is an exercise in how to write, read, think and live." (PopMatters.com )
"Among the many things that made Hitchens unique was his precision of thought and expression. What made him rare were his courage and tenacity. He was fearless in the field and relentless in his defense of the defenseless with that mightiest of swords--his pen. Judging from his final essays, he was also fearless in the fact of death." (Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post )
"I have no doubt that Christopher Hitchens will have an afterlife. As one of the most original and provocative writers of his generation, his words will continue to mesmerize, incite, confound, and entertain." (Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, FoxNews.com )
"His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater's famous phrase, he burned 'with this hard gem-like flame.'Right to the end." (Ian McEwan )
"A seeker of truth to the end, and a deservedly legendary witness against the hypocrisy of the ever-sactimonious establishment. What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of the powerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state, or a claim to the ear of the divine." (Robert Scheer, TruthDig )
"Reading and responding to the Hitch is ceaselessly inspiring and seldom less than exhilarating. More, it is an instigatory experience: it compels you to get involved more deeply with the world around and inside you. Reading any worthwhile writer is an act of celebration, a shared reaction to the act of creation. More, it is an exercise in how to write, read, think and live." (PopMatters.com )
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 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment