Books Recommended by Christopher Hitchens
The Ship
C. S. Forester
Source: "The odds in tonnage and gunnery are adjusted in favour of the British side by sheer discipline, pluck and morale." - Christopher Hitchens
The Cruel Sea
Nicholas Monsarrat
Source: "[I read this book] about 50 times before I was 15." - Christopher Hitchens
A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell
Source: "When you read [this book], you will straightaway notice that the veterans of the first world war are the instructors of the novices of the second world war." - Christopher Hitchens
The Sword of Honour Trilogy
Evelyn Waugh
Source: "When you read [this trilogy], you will straightaway notice that the veterans of the first world war are the instructors of the novices of the second world war." - Christopher Hitchens
Bitter Lemons
Lawrence Durrell
Source: "[The author's] beautiful but patronizing memoir." - Christopher Hitchens
Borges
Edwin Williamson
Source: "[This] biography reaches the heart of the labyrinth—the intense and wondrous life of Jorge Luis Borges." - Christopher Hitchens
Scenes of Clerical Life
George Eliot
Source: "The gold standard." - Christopher Hitchens
Complete Poems by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Source: "I think [people] should read [this author]. In particular they should read 'Dulce et Decorum Est.' The poem that first arrested me." - Christopher Hitchens
The Fall of Berlin 1945
Antony Beevor
Source: "[The author's] heart-freezing account [...] of the rape and murder and humiliation that fell on Germans in the territory taken by the Soviet army in 1945." - Christopher Hitchens
The Silent Angel
Heinrich Böll
Source: "Unflinchingly discusses the ruins and the corpses." - Christopher Hitchens
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann
Source: "The narrator of [this book] is relating his story against the clock, as the German homeland finds itself pulverized and encircled in the spring of 1945." - Christopher Hitchens
The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Source: "Once [the author] succeeded in getting [this book print], it became obvious that something terminal had happened to the edifice of Soviet power." - Christopher Hitchens
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Source: "[The author's] electrifying first book." - Christopher Hitchens
Portrait in Sepia
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
Daughter of Fortune
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
The House of the Spirits
Isabel Allende
Source: "The 'subject' is assuredly family life, which is also the tempestuous subtext of much of [the author]'s nonfiction." - Christopher Hitchens
The Captive Mind
Czeslaw Milosz
Source: "I was very struck by the courtesy and grace of this famous polemic and by the way that [the author] combined firmness on his own part with an understanding of the position of others." - Christopher Hitchens
Hons and Rebels
Jessica Mitford
Source: "These pages describe the steady, determined evolution of une femme serieuse." - Christopher Hitchens
Rebel Land
Christopher de Bellaigue
Source: "I would recommend [this book] of exceptional interest and scholarship." - Christopher Hitchens
Armenian Golgotha
Grigoris Balakian
Source: "I would recommend [this book] of exceptional interest and scholarship." - Christopher Hitchens
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk
Source: "[With this book, the author] became a kind of register of this position, dwelling on the interpenetration of Islamic and Western styles." - Christopher Hitchens
Snow
Orhan Pamuk
Source: "From reading [this book] one might easily conclude that all the Armenians of Anatolia had decided for some reason to pick up and depart en masse." - Christopher Hitchens
Shameful Act
Taner Akçam
Source: "The only Turkish historian to have talked of genocide." - Christopher Hitchens
The Bomb in My Garden
Mahdi Obeidi
Source: "A memoir by Saddam Hussein’s chief nuclear physicist." - Christopher Hitchens
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
Gregor Von Rezzori
Source: "Evokes the charms and hatreds of a lost world—and the enduring contradictions of anti-Semitism." - Christopher Hitchens
By Any Means Necessary
Spike Lee
Source: "Very interesting." - Christopher Hitchens
Voltaire's Bastards
John Ralston Saul
Source: "[The author's] critique of impure reason." - Christopher Hitchens
The Caged Virgin
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Source: "I would urge you all to go out and buy [this book]." - Christopher Hitchens
Infidel
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Source: "Describes the escape of a young Somali woman from sexual chattelhood to a new life in Holland." - Christopher Hitchens
The End of Faith
Sam Harris
Source: "[The author is] one of the finest volunteers in this cause." - Christopher Hitchens
