Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949) is a British-American author, journalist and literary critic. Currently living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media outlets. Hitchens is also a political observer, whose best-selling books ? the latest being God Is Not GreatNew York Times Bestseller list have made him a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits.

Hitchens is noted for his skill and acerbic wit as a polemicist and intellectual. While he was once identified with the Anglo-American radical political left, he has latterly embraced some right-wing causes, notably the Iraq War. Formerly a Trotskyist and a fixture in the left wing publications of both the United Kingdom and United States, Hitchens departed from the consensus of the political left in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the European left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11, 2001 attacks strengthened his embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he calls "fascism with an Islamic face". He is known for his ardent admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger, and Bill Clinton.

Hitchens is an atheist and antitheist, and he describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism, and reason.