Reading List

Authors Like Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was born in Portsmouth in 1949, the son of a naval officer, read philosophy, politics and economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and spent four decades writing for the New Statesman, The Nation, Vanity Fair, Slate and The Atlantic. He wrote a short, savage book about Mother Teresa, The Missionary Position (1995), argued that Henry Kissinger should be tried for war crimes, supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and left The Nation over it, and in 2008 let himself be waterboarded before writing that it was torture. God Is Not Great (2007) was a finalist for the National Book Award. He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2010, on the tour for his memoir Hitch-22, and died in Houston in December 2011, aged 62. The ten writers below share his conviction that prose is a weapon and that no reputation is safe from argument.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Essays · Polemic · Politics and religion · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Christopher Hitchens, start with George Orwell, the writer he defended in Why Orwell Matters (2002) and most wanted to resemble. Thomas Paine, whose Rights of Man Hitchens wrote a book about, is the original pamphleteer, and Gore Vidal was the essayist who once named Hitchens his heir before they fell out. Further down: two writers who answered God Is Not Great directly, and the old friend who started his fiercest public quarrel.

10 authors like Christopher Hitchens

01
The original pamphleteer

Thomas Paine

English-American · Common Sense (1776), Rights of Man (1791), The Age of Reason (1794)

Paine (1737–1809) was born in Thetford, Norfolk, emigrated to America in 1774 and wrote Common Sense, the pamphlet that made the case for independence from Britain. Rights of Man defended the French Revolution against Edmund Burke, and The Age of Reason attacked organised religion. In 2006 Hitchens published a short book about Rights of Man.

The model for Hitchens’s whole career: an Englishman in America writing plain, furious prose for ordinary readers against kings and churches. The Age of Reason is the eighteenth-century God Is Not Great.

— Lisanne
02
The philosopher against belief

Bertrand Russell

British · Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

Russell (1872–1970) was a mathematician and philosopher who was jailed in 1918 for his opposition to the First World War. Why I Am Not a Christian began as a lecture to the National Secular Society in 1927 and was later published with other essays on religion. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.

Russell made the case against religion that Hitchens made eighty years later, with the same mix of logic and wit, and he paid for his opinions too. Russell is calmer and more philosophical; Hitchens is more political and more personal.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bertrand Russell →

03
His model

George Orwell

British · Homage to Catalonia (1938), “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

Orwell (1903–1950) fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, was shot through the throat and wrote Homage to Catalonia about how the Communists turned on their own allies. “Politics and the English Language” argues that vague writing makes political lies easier. Hitchens defended him against critics on both left and right in Why Orwell Matters (2002).

The writer Hitchens most wanted to be compared with: a man of the left who attacked the left’s lies, and who believed clear prose was a political act. Read Orwell’s essays to see where Hitchens learned to write a column.

— Lisanne

Every book by George Orwell →

04
The heir he refused

Gore Vidal

American · Burr (1973), Lincoln (1984), United States: Essays 1952–1992 (1993)

Vidal (1925–2012) wrote historical novels about American power and essays on politics, sex and literature; United States won the National Book Award in 1993. He once named Hitchens his successor, but in 2010 Hitchens attacked him in Vanity Fair as a crackpot over his claims about the 11 September attacks, and on the back of Hitch-22 Vidal’s endorsement appears crossed out.

The American essayist Hitchens most resembles in wit and range, and the one he argued with most publicly. Read Vidal’s essays for the same scorn for the powerful and the same pleasure in a well-made insult, then read their quarrel for what each thought the other had got wrong.

— Lisanne
05
The essay as witness

James Baldwin

American · Notes of a Native Son (1955), The Fire Next Time (1963)

Baldwin (1924–1987) grew up in Harlem, preached as a teenager and moved to Paris in 1948. The Fire Next Time is two long letters about race in America, one addressed to his nephew, and includes his account of leaving the church he had preached in.

Baldwin and Hitchens both wrote essays that are arguments and personal testimony at once, and both broke with the church of their youth. Baldwin writes from inside the American injustice he describes; his moral seriousness is a useful counterweight to Hitchens’s relish for combat.

— Lisanne

Every book by James Baldwin →

06
The public intellectual

Susan Sontag

American · Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)

Sontag (1933–2004) wrote essays on art, illness, photography and war. In 1993 she directed a production of Waiting for Godot in besieged Sarajevo, and Regarding the Pain of Others asks what images of war do to the people who look at them.

Like Hitchens, Sontag treated the essay as a way of taking sides in public on art and politics alike, and both wrote against the West’s inaction over Bosnia. She is more abstract and less funny; read her for the seriousness, him for the attack.

— Lisanne

Every book by Susan Sontag →

07
The friend and the quarrel

Martin Amis

British · Money (1984), Experience (2000), Koba the Dread (2002)

Amis (1949–2023) was the son of the novelist Kingsley Amis and worked with Hitchens at the New Statesman in the 1970s. Experience is his memoir, and Koba the Dread is a book about Stalin’s terror that provoked a public argument with Hitchens in The Atlantic; the friendship survived it.

Hitchens’s closest literary friend, and a writer with the same appetite for style and provocation. Experience shows the friendship from the other side, and Koba the Dread shows two friends arguing over the left’s blindness to Stalin.

— Lisanne

Every book by Martin Amis →

08
Free speech, at a price

Salman Rushdie

British-American · Midnight’s Children (1981), The Satanic Verses (1988), Knife (2024)

Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947 and educated in England. After the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death, and Hitchens was among his most outspoken defenders. In 2022 he was stabbed on stage in Chautauqua, New York, and lost the sight of one eye; Knife is his account of the attack.

The case that defined Hitchens’s politics after 1989: a writer threatened with death for a novel. Rushdie’s memoirs Joseph Anton and Knife tell the story Hitchens argued about from the outside.

— Lisanne

Every book by Salman Rushdie →

09
The Marxist who answered back

Terry Eagleton

British · Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Reason, Faith, and Revolution (2009)

Eagleton was born in Salford in 1943 and is a literary critic and Marxist. In his 2008 Terry Lectures at Yale, published as Reason, Faith, and Revolution, he attacked the new atheism of Richard Dawkins and Hitchens, whom he combined into a single figure, “Ditchkins”, for writing about theology without understanding it.

The most direct answer to God Is Not Great, written from the left Hitchens came from. Eagleton is just as rude and often as funny, and reading him after Hitchens is the quickest way to test the arguments.

— Lisanne
10
Faith, argued in prose

Marilynne Robinson

American · Gilead (2004), The Death of Adam (1998), Absence of Mind (2010)

Robinson was born in Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1943. Gilead, a letter from an elderly Iowa minister to his young son, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005. Her essays defend Calvinist and liberal Protestant thought, and Absence of Mind argues against the claims of popular science writers that religion and the mind can be explained away.

An essayist who matches Hitchens in learning and confidence but argues the other way: that religious thought is serious, humane and part of the history of liberty. Read Absence of Mind as a reply to the new atheism, and Gilead to see faith from inside.

— Lisanne

Every book by Marilynne Robinson →

Where to start if you loved Christopher Hitchens

If you loved Hitchens’s essays, read George Orwell.

Start with “Politics and the English Language” and Homage to Catalonia.

If you loved God Is Not Great, read Thomas Paine or Bertrand Russell.

The Age of Reason and Why I Am Not a Christian made the same case first.

If you want to hear the other side, read Terry Eagleton or Marilynne Robinson.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution answers Hitchens by name; Absence of Mind answers the movement.

If you loved Hitch-22, read Martin Amis.

Experience is the memoir of his closest friend, and Hitchens is in it.

If you want to go back to Hitchens himself, read Arguably or Mortality.

Arguably (2011) is the best of his late essays; Mortality (2012) collects what he wrote while dying.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Christopher Hitchens

Who writes like Christopher Hitchens?

George Orwell and Thomas Paine were his models, and Gore Vidal, James Baldwin and Susan Sontag wrote the same kind of combative public essay. Among his friends, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie shared his taste for style and provocation.

What should I read after God Is Not Great?

Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian for the older case against religion, and Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution for a reply written partly to Hitchens.

Is Christopher Hitchens like George Orwell?

Hitchens wanted the comparison and wrote a book, Why Orwell Matters (2002), defending Orwell. Both were men of the left who attacked the left’s blind spots and believed clear prose was a political duty.

Does Christopher Hitchens have a new book?

No. He died in December 2011. Since then his publishers have released collections, including Mortality (2012), And Yet... (2015) and A Hitch in Time, which gathers his writing for the London Review of Books.

Which Christopher Hitchens book should I read first?

Arguably (2011), a big collection of his essays, shows his full range. For his life, read the memoir Hitch-22 (2010); for his most famous argument, God Is Not Great (2007).

Is Peter Hitchens related to Christopher Hitchens?

Yes, Peter Hitchens is his younger brother, a journalist and a Christian, and the two publicly debated religion and the Iraq War in 2008 and 2010.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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