Mark Raphael Baker Mark Raphael Baker i(A16947 works by)
Born: Established: 7 Oct 1959 ; Died: Ceased: 4 May 2023
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Love the Miracle of My Mortality Mark Raphael Baker , 2024 extract autobiography (A Season of Death : A Memoir)
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 26-27 October 2024; (p. 16)
1 1 y separately published work icon A Season of Death : A Memoir Mark Raphael Baker , Melbourne : Melbourne University Press , 2024 28354633 2024 single work autobiography

'A thoughtful memoir on living well in the face 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.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love Mark Raphael Baker , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2017 12169663 2017 single work autobiography

'One minute my wife was there. In a flash she was gone. In the ten months of Kerryn’s dying, I prepared myself for everything except for her death. Now that she is gone, I am desperate to know her as I never knew her.

'Thirty Days is a portrait of grief, of a marriage and of a family. It is the moving memoir of Mark’s wife of 33 years, Kerryn Baker, who died ten months after her diagnosis, aged 55, from stomach cancer.

'It is also a study in how we construct our own version of the past, after Mark discovers a cache of Kerryn’s letters in the laundry cupboard and has to rethink their relationship. It is a book about memory and its uncertainties, as Mark sifts through photos and home movies, as his wife gets sicker, and his search for clues about their relationship grows more desperate. In her last days, Kerryn reveals her traumatic childhood to Mark for the first time. She emerges as the rock of the family, a brave and wise woman, clear-eyed about her treatment, focused on finding the path to a peaceful death. Paradoxically, her dying brings the couple back to the intensity of their first love.

'In the tradition of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Cory Taylor’s remarkable memoir, Dying, Mark Baker’s Thirty Days is an inspirational book about death and dying.' (Publication Summary)

1 3 y separately published work icon The Fiftieth Gate : A Journey Through Memory Mark Raphael Baker , Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 1997 Z1296530 1997 single work biography

'A love story and a detective story, a study of history and of memory, this spellbinding new work explores a son's confrontation with the terror of his parents' childhood. Moving from Poland and Germany to Jerusalem and Melbourne, Mark Raphael Baker travels across the silence of fifty years, through the gates of Auschwitz, and into a dark bunker where a little girl hides in fear. As he returns to scenes of his parents' captivity, he struggles to unveil the mystery of their survival. The Fiftieth Gate is a journey from despair and death towards hope and life; the story of a son who enters his parents' memories and, inside the darkness, finds light.' (Harper Collins)

1 Holocaust Memories Mark Raphael Baker , 1994 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 3 September 1994; (p. 9)

— Review of My Father's Silence Jacob G. Rosenberg , 1994 selected work poetry
1 Raiders of Schindler's Lost Ark Mark Raphael Baker , 1994 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 12 February 1994; (p. 17)

— Review of Schindler's List Steven Zaillian , 1993 single work film/TV
1 Raiders of Schindler's Lost Ark Mark Raphael Baker , 1994 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 February 1994; (p. C1)

— Review of Schindler's List Steven Zaillian , 1993 single work film/TV
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