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
[Hitchens's] voice remains civilised, searching and ready to vanquish all his enemies -- Colm Tobin
A trenchant, learned, iconoclastic and splendidly witty commentator on public life and, as here, on his own private triumphs and travails... unremittingly elegant, a master of graceful prose -- John Banville
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens is an inspiring, astonishingly candid and ultimately heartbreaking account of one man's battle with cancer. And not just any man... a brilliant contrary mind, wonderful writer, world-class debater and extremely dangerous luncher. This book, featuring the articles he wrote for Vanity Fair while he was dying, will make you laugh, fume and cry in equal measure. -- Piers Morgan * Mail on Sunday Books of the Year *
Characteristic of his elegant wit: philosophical, literary, ironic, sardonic, reflective and resentful * The Times *
Hitchens's account of his climb to extinction is Larkinesque, and not only because his sentences stay in the mind as firmly as good poetry. * Literary Review *
Hitchens's traditional strengths - his mastery of irony, his range of reference, his contempt for euphemism - are all in evidence here but there is a timeless, aphoristic quality to these essays that distinguishes them from his writings on politics and literature. * New Statesman *
Apart from the obvious sense of denoument, what makes [Hitchens's] last seven essays so potent... is their struggle towards the shattering of illusion... The true struggle of his last writings is to remain himself, deep in the country of the ill, for as long as he can. * Observer *
Witty, thoughtful and refreshingly irritable * Evening Standard *
Shocking, intimate and astute, Mortality is a memoir like no other * Irish Independent *
