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| Christopher Hitchens |
The British writer and journalist, Christopher Hitchens, who made a way of life atheism with books such as God exists and God is good, and known for polemics on issues and people from the British royal family, Mother Teresa to Henry Kissinger , died in Houston, USA, at age 62 after a long battle with esophageal cancer. He never believed in the afterlife, that God would be waiting. And he remained until the last breath of life. In the final stage of their disease even dispensed with as far as possible all that the doctors offered to alleviate their pain.
In 2010 he published his autobiography Hitch-22 that began precisely with the announcement of his death. Hitchens, achieved great success with its elegant prose, bright, and sharp points of view ... and arrogant. For nearly 20 years he worked for Vanity Fair, who described it as "an incomparable critic, a rhetorician master, an exalted sage and a bon vivant without guilt." He also wrote, among others for The New York Times Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and National Geographic.
In the United States was frencuente see on television and was a pleasure to listen to defend their ideas in his impeccable British English, but was not at all agree with the content of his words. The Missionaries of Charity in India have pointed out, after learning of the death of Hitchens, the writer offended many people as to which captivated, but said he would pray for his soul in spite of the aggressive stance he displayed against Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whom he called "political opportunist, a friend of dictators" and blamed who have contributed to the misery of the poor with their opposition to the pill and abortion. The book The missionary position, not translated into Spanish, was an attack on all fronts against Mother Teresa and made him known worldwide.
But it was not her only famous victim. Hitchens also harshly criticized Henry Kissinger, whom he called a war criminal for his "political murders" in Vietnam, Chile and Bangladesh and who called for the jail. Interestingly, backed Margaret Thatcher when she responded in 1982 to attempt to resume Argentine Falklands.
Then, after the attacks of September 11, 2001 became an ardent American patriot, who obtained citizenship after living in the country since the seventies. Publicly stated that he was not left wing and passed to support George W. Bush, interventionist foreign policy and the war in Iraq. In fact, the "mutation" was not so great. Hitchens always considered Obama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda as reactionaries against the dark that you could only fight using weapons. And felt the Iraq war as a war against fascism.
Carefully reading his biography it is clear that Hitchens was never a pacifist. It also highlights the immense love of literature was born when a teacher gave him two books, one of Evelyn Waugh and a PG Wodehouse with a note "read this". These readings left a deep impression and made him one of the more elegant writers in English.
Salman Rushdie, who defended when the Khomeini regime in Iran sentenced to death for blasphemy to Islam consider his book The Satanic Verses, dismissed him with a sense of "goodbye, my dear friend. A great voice has been silent. A large Heart Skipped. " Despite his pen often destructive, full of irony and coldness, and its forked tongue to whom he despised, "Hitch" was an affable man, good friend to his friends.
