I have no doubt that Mark Baker would write such a vivid and lively book about death. Philip Adams once said that Baker uses memory as Rembrandt uses light. With this extraordinary memoir, Baker himself has now become that light - illuminating, warming, guiding. It is an extraordinary act of love.
—Sarah Krasnostein, award-winning author. Her books include The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay and Resurrection, which won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, the Walkley Book Award, the National Biography Award and the Wellcome Book Prize; and The Believer was named one of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2022.

Mark's ability to handle tragedy and comedy with equally brilliant and light strokes amazes me... From the very first page, the story shows depth and is accompanied by a light, dancing rhythm. After finishing this heart-wrenchingly beautiful story, I cried.
— Alex Miller, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award

This book tenderly embraces our deepest fears with open arms... This is the third part of the extraordinary trilogy, and this work focuses on loss and gradually intensifies... Even on his deathbed, Mark Baker remained a complete self. At the moment of his life's end, he was never so alive. His descriptions of those days should be passed down from generation to generation, bringing peace to many.
— The Age

This book is not only a meditation on the finality of death, but also an exploration of the various ways in which grief can be transformed into a new perspective on life.
— The Australian Book Review

The theme and tone of this book, honesty and humanity, as well as the elegant writing style, are all breathtaking. Equally remarkable is the author's recognition that life and death, comedy and tragedy, love and loss, suffering and joy, these binary opposites, are in fact not binary opposites: they interpenetrate, interdepend, and are closely linked. As Mark wrote: "My words will guard me, and I will rest in the earth."
—— "The Insider"

Readers will open this book in search of answers about their own existence. Perhaps they will see it as a guide, or a peek into another side of life. Of course, it encompasses all these elements. Those who appreciate his work will want to read his final words. But beyond all the wisdom and philosophical references in this memoir, and the various fields Beck constantly delves into, this book is ultimately a record of a man gracefully embracing every possibility. I read it because I knew it would remind me of some perspectives, and the importance of having our pains, pasts, and follies. And it did so in a beautiful and optimistic way.

★A thoughtful memoir on living well in the face of death! The posthumous work of one of Australia's most important public intellectuals and historians, Mark Raphael Baker, who, in his final moments, tenderly embraced our deepest fears with his arms...
★ Shortlisted, 2025 The Age Book of the Year！The Age is considered a newspaper of record for Australia！
★ Highly recommended by Australian Book Review, and The Insider.
★ When life comes to an end, how should one write about the essence of life? Baker was no stranger to this question. Death loomed over much of his life, and writing became his solace, a window to understanding and hope.

Mark Raphael Baker was no stranger to death. Over seven years he had become a mourner three times over: for his first wife, for his brother and for his father. When diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he began to reflect on their deaths, his probable death and on Death as, in the words of Ecclesiastes, a 'season' that produced a large and bitter harvest for the Baker family. Powerful and conflicting emotions assailed him, but their destructive power was always defeated by his love of his family and of life, which never deserted him even when his spirit was most weary. Over the short course of his illness, he came to realise that to love both truly, he must die as the most authentic version of himself he can achieve. It enabled him to die with humbling grace and dignity.
In A Season of Death, readers of The Fiftieth Gate and Thirty Days will rediscover the many forms of Mark's humour, his candour and his depth of thought and feeling, albeit in a different key, as it must be when those virtues reveal themselves in expressions of vulnerability that fend off self-pity.
There is profound sorrow in this memoir but there is matching joy and much love, interwoven by a fine writer and thinker into a story that will deepen one's understanding of life.

Mark Raphael Baker (1959 - 2023)
Mark Raphael Baker was one of Australia's most important public intellectuals and historians. He was a highly respected Holocaust scholar, a beloved teacher, an inspiring award-winning author, and a talented photographer. He served as an associate professor at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University's School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies.
He studied at the Hebrew University and returned to Australia in the early 1980s to study art at the University of Melbourne, graduating with honors and receiving a scholarship to Wolfson College, Oxford, where he obtained a PhD in East European Jewish history.
During his tenure at overseas universities, Mark was appointed the first lecturer in the Department of Jewish Studies at the University of Melbourne in 1988. In 2008, he became the director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Under his leadership for a decade, the centre developed into a globally significant Jewish academic hub, covering research areas such as East European history, Jewish mysticism, and genocide studies - an emerging field that draws on the culture of testimony in Holocaust studies. He also founded the magazine Generation in the 1990s, which was known as the Australian Jewish version of Vanity Fair.
In his 1997 magnum opus, "The Fifty-First Gate: A Journey of Memory", Mark lifted the veil on his parents' war experiences, told from the perspective of a son struggling to come to terms with the connection between his parents' trauma and his own life. "The Fifty-First Gate" won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award and was included in high school curricula for many years. When it was reissued in 2017 to mark its 20th anniversary, it had sold over 70,000 copies. Holocaust historian Christopher R. Browning praised the book as "still the gold standard for second-generation Holocaust memoirs". His second book, "Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love" (2017), was written after his first wife, Karyn, fought stomach cancer for ten months.
Mark Raphael Baker passed away on May 4, 2023, due to pancreatic cancer, leaving behind a rich legacy of teaching, writing, and thought.
His photography exhibition, "The Things You Can't See: The Photography of Mark Raphael Baker", will be on display at the Australian Jewish Museum from April 1 to July 6, 2025. Baker's photography spans countries, cultures, and eras, offering a private perspective on daily life, emotions, and human relationships. This exhibition is the first of its kind and showcases his lifelong dedication to witnessing and exploring the human condition.