Mortality

A Sunday Times Book of The Year, A Mail on Sunday Book of The Year, An Independent Book of The Year, A The Times Book of The Year. While on a US book tour for his memoir, "Hitch-22," Christopher Hitchens experienced severe chest and thoracic pain, leading to his collapse in a New York hotel room. He later described this harrowing event in a poignant Vanity Fair essay, stating that he had been forcibly "deported from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the following year, Hitchens endured the harsh realities of contemporary cancer treatment, a journey marked by profound suffering and the eventual loss of his voice. "Mortality" is the most contemplative writing Hitchens produced, offering a brutally frank narrative of his illness, a critique of societal norms surrounding cancer, and a reflective conclusion to a life filled with vigorous debate and exceptional writing. Through this candid exploration of mortality, Hitchens seeks to humanize a disease often understood only through its association with intense suffering.