A Season of Death: Author Talk

Mark Raphael Baker was a Holocaust scholar, an inspiring teacher and the critically acclaimed author of The Fiftieth Gate and Thirty Days. He was also a much-loved member of the Melbourne and Sydney Jewish Communities. 

Between the day when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his death thirteen months later, Mark wrote A Season of Death for his daughter, Melila, who was twenty months old when he died. He entrusted the task of preparing it for publication to Michelle Lesh, his wife and Melila’s mother, and to her stepfather, Raimond Gaita. 

Michelle and Rai will discuss their special relationship to A Season of Death, the sorrow and the joy in it and Mark’s astonishing achievement in writing it, with Sarah Krasnostein

WHEN: Thursday, 14th November, 2024, at The Westfield Suite, in the conference space on Level 6 of Westfield Bondi Junction, near Fitness First. See Level 6 map here. Please arrive at 6:45pm for a prompt 7pm start.

TICKETS: 

Admission: $25.00 (excluding external fees), includes admission for one, a beverage and nibbles upon arrival.

Admission + Book Bundle: $50.00 (excluding external fees), includes admission for one, a copy of A Season of Death by Mark Baker (RRP: $29.99), a beverage and nibbles upon arrival.

Additional copies of A Season of Death will be available for purchase on the evening.

A thoughtful memoir on living well in the face of death.

About A Season of Death

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.

“Trust Mark Baker to write a book about dying that is so brilliantly alive. Phillip Adams once said that Baker does with memory what Rembrandt does with light. With this remarkable memoir, Baker himself has now become that light – illuminating, warming, and guiding. An exceptional act of love.” - Sarah Krasnostein

About the Speakers:

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, ‘Not Waving, Drowning‘ and ‘On Peter Carey‘. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America. Her awards include the Victorian Prize for Literature, the Australian Book Industry Award for Non-Fiction and the Walkley’s Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism. She is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

Michelle Lesh is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She worked at the United Nations as an international lawyer, and for many years in Israel as a legal advisor at governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. She is on the board of Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee, on the International Council of New Israel Fund, and an Officer for the International Bar Association War Crimes Committee. She has written for several publications, including The Jewish Independent.

Raimond Gaita is Honorary Professorial Fellow in Melbourne Law School and Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world”. His books include: Romulus, My Father, which was made into a feature film of the same name, A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love & Truth & Justice, The Philosopher’s Dog, After Romulus, as editor with Gerry Simpson, Who’s Afraid of International Law and, most recently, Justice and Hope: Essays, Lectures and Other Writings.

About Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore

Rated as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world by National Geographic, Gertrude & Alice Cafe Bookstore is an oasis for writers, readers, and coffee lovers. Books overflow from the shelves of their store, featuring a mix of new, second-hand, antiquarian and rare books. Stay a while & enjoy some homemade chai, and amazing coffee, and unearth a book treasure or two. Read more about the bookstore's story here, and about the real Gertrude & Alice here.