Only writer, commentator, contrarian, public intellectual, and noted atheist Christopher Hitchens knows now whether he has indeed gone off to some grim North Korea in the sky. Hitchens, who once imagined the idea of an afterlife as “like living in North Korea,” died Thursday in Houston at age 62. The cause was complications from esophageal cancer, which he was diagnosed with while promoting his memoir “Hitch-22” in 2010. A brilliant essayist and author of polemics that took on Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa, and organized religion, Hitchens remained defiant until the end.
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