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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'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)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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No Magic Can Turn Back Loss
2017
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23 September 2017; (p. 25)'Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir The Year of Magical Thinking begins: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” After the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, she examines grief the way a writer examines anything: “In times of trouble … read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.” Mark Raphael Baker, director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Monash University, began writing Thirty Days after the death of his wife, Kerryn Baker. Like Didion’s, his work is framed by a motif of magic and the quest for a kind of cognitive trick that might turn back loss.' (Introduction)
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The Fiftieth Gate : An Australian Case Study in Twentieth-Century 'Popular' Publishing
2005
single work
essay
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 4 2005; '...[This] paper explores the mechanisms by which the Australian publishing subsidiary of an international conglomerate, with its profit imperatives and consequent adoption of risk-averse publishing strategies, created a bestselling book from the unlikely source of a second-generation literary memoir.' - The author. -
Generations of Journeys
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Speaking to Immigrants : Oral Testimony and the History of Australian Migration 2002; (p. 149-169)
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The Fiftieth Gate : An Australian Case Study in Twentieth-Century 'Popular' Publishing
2005
single work
essay
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 4 2005; '...[This] paper explores the mechanisms by which the Australian publishing subsidiary of an international conglomerate, with its profit imperatives and consequent adoption of risk-averse publishing strategies, created a bestselling book from the unlikely source of a second-generation literary memoir.' - The author. -
Generations of Journeys
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Speaking to Immigrants : Oral Testimony and the History of Australian Migration 2002; (p. 149-169) -
No Magic Can Turn Back Loss
2017
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23 September 2017; (p. 25)'Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir The Year of Magical Thinking begins: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” After the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, she examines grief the way a writer examines anything: “In times of trouble … read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.” Mark Raphael Baker, director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Monash University, began writing Thirty Days after the death of his wife, Kerryn Baker. Like Didion’s, his work is framed by a motif of magic and the quest for a kind of cognitive trick that might turn back loss.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 1997 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Multicultural NSW Award
- 1997 winner The TDK Australian Audio Book Awards — The Trish Trinick Prize for the Best Narrator
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cPoland,cEastern Europe, Europe,
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cAustralia,c
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cPoland,cEastern Europe, Europe,
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cGermany,cWestern Europe, Europe,
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Jerusalem,
cIsrael,cMiddle East, Asia,
- Melbourne, Victoria,
- ca. 1939-1990
