Description

Shortlisted for the 2012 Orwell Prize

‘As soon as we abandon our own reason’, wrote Bertrand Russell, ‘and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.’

For over forty years, Christopher Hitchens has proclaimed truth where others have spun falsehood and written, with passionate commitment, on matters that others fear to broach. This volume of essays encompasses Hitchens’ writing over the past decade on politics, literature and religion.

In Arguably Hitchens explores a wide range of cultural and political issues, past and present. His fresh perceptions of figures as diverse as Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Rebecca West and Philip Larkin are matched in brilliance by his acerbic discussions and intrepid observations, gathered over a lifetime of travelling and reporting from destinations such as Iran, China and Pakistan.

Hitchens’ life has above all else been one of defiance and wit, courage and humility: in an age of digital punditry and twenty-four hour hucksterism, he has been a voice of reason amid the clamour, making an indelible mark on politics and literature on both sides of the Atlantic. Arguably is the indispensible companion to the Anglosphere’s pre-eminent political writer.

Publisher Review

Hitchens at his most stylish, savage, literate and brilliant * Observer * Read it you must, partly as a tribute to a great life well lived, but mainly because it is so entertaining * Sunday Times * Essays on everything... remind us what we've lost in Hitchens - someone to provoke assent, outrage, laughter and thought * Sunday Telegraph * One of the most stimulating thinkers and entertaining writers we have. -- Bill Keller * New York Times * He has no equal in contemporary Anglo American letters. -- Jason Cowley * Financial Times * To say that, during the past three decades, the world would have been poorer, duller and altogether a smaller place without Hitchens and his writings would be to utter a cliche of the kind he despises. It would also be true. -- John Gray * New Statesman *