Mortality

By: Christopher Hitchens

Narrated by: Simon Prebble

Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his best-selling 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 18 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.

©2012 Christopher Hitchens (P)2012 Hachette Audio

brilliant and moving

beautifully told unsentimental first person account of living with and dying from cancer by witty and courageous CH

words

Words belong to hitch. I only continue because audible makes me. Read this book now

Death conquers any philosophy

These short essays left me with a strong sense of the despair, misery and hope for survival that (I suppose) all humans go through when they know their life is threatened. To me, this was a naked reminder that ideas, philosophies, brains, money, everything, stops in their tracks when the animal called human is facing death.
Be prepared to get depressed - at least i was, a lot. Maybe religion does have a serious purpose - to allow us to hope that this miserable end has a purpose, and that it's not the end.

Even in the end Christopher didn't dissapont!!!

Where does Mortality rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I love anything that Christopher Hitchens writes so this was a special book for me because I knew that it was his last. And in true Hitch fashion he was honest and candid right to the end.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Mortality?

I love when he talks about how there needs to be a cancer school to teach people what to say to those that have cancer... And I loved what his wife Carol Blue had to say at the end of the book about him.

What does Simon Prebble bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I can't say that he brings anything one way or another... nothing against him but when you are used to hearing/listening to Christopher for so many years you just expect to hear his voice.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes, on one hand I didn't want to put it down and on the other I didn't want it to end because I knew it was the last he would write.

Any additional comments?

If you are a Christopher Hitchens fan then you will appreciate this book. It shows a side of him that most of us never got to see. RIP Christopher... You are missed.

Miss Christopher Hitchens

Considering the subject matter of this book, it had typical Christopher Hitchens humor. Enjoyed it being raw in his feelings and descriptions of what he went through.

A philosopher looks death, square in the face and reports…

Regardless of what you may think of the author as a person or his metaphysical beliefs, he manages to describe the experience of living with a life-threatening illness in the deepest most intimate of terms. His humanity and his stark interaction with that force which we all must reckon speaks almost fearlessly to anyone truly contemplating their own mortality..

Pure clarity on the topic of death.

Death is never a good thing, but Hitchens once again has spurred my motivation. Live life, and live it well is a good motto. But I don't think you'd ever reach the verve of Hitchens. I've never known of anyone so sure that they are correct, and that their path is the right one. While I didn't always agree with his points, I was never as sure about my opinion as he seemed to be about his.

As I listened on, while I already knew the ending, I could not help but think that Hitchens was too smart, too creative, and too boisterous to not find a way to change the course of this inevitable ending. He gave insight into the plight of cancer patients, and intimate thoughts of the terminally ill. Insights that I think you'd only receive from a dear loved one going through the same illness and treatments. In all of his writing, the one thing I took was a severe pride in humanity. We are but clever animals, and look what we have accomplished. And all of us do what we do while knowing this fate awaits us. What courage it takes to live life like we're not dying. He wrote this with that same unending pride and thoughtfulness that he chastised religious believers for forsaking. Spending life on bended knee for an idea that has been improved upon was not for Hitchens.

Dying while pretending he wasn't going to die was not his way either. He took all of the pain of death, and focused on it. He had to full appreciate what he was going through as he wrote about it. That takes some serious intestinal fortitude, and that was the way of Hitchens.

While my rambling review is not great, I highly recommend this book.

A MUST! Heartbreaking & beautiful.

I was expecting this to be an expose into the philosophy of mortality in general. I was not expecting this to be a very personal and intimate tale of Christopher's "battle" with cancer. wow! this was something very simple honest and in its way quite beautiful. I am so glad to have stumbled across this true gem.

Christopher Hitchens. I miss his writing.

Even though this book is not read by Hitch you can still here his voice in every word. His stories are/were always entertaining, very funny, educational and filled with his amazement of his life. As he said in his interview with Charlie Rose "I am leaving the party earlier than I though I would, much earlier. I also highly recommend Hitch 22. It is read by Hitch and you will listen over and over.

Indeed the greatest orator of our time!

I miss Hitch every day. His last musings are written with the same unmatchable eloquence of his past work. I also can't think of many people who could communicate with such dignity, knowing the end was near.