A Season of Death is Mark Raphael Baker's account of losing his wife, the acclaimed human rights lawyer and academic Michelle Lesh, and the long, uneven process of rebuilding a life in the aftermath.

Written with remarkable candour, the book moves through illness, death, mourning, memory and the difficult possibility of renewal, refusing easy consolations or tidy conclusions. Baker writes about devastating loss alongside the practical realities of continuing to live: friendship, family, work, loneliness, ageing, desire and the awkwardness of beginning again. The result is neither a purely personal memoir nor a self-help account of bereavement, but a thoughtful exploration of how identity changes when one of its central relationships disappears. It is a book concerned not only with death, but with what comes after it.

Mark Raphael Baker is an Australian writer, historian and biographer whose work often explores memory, identity and historical trauma. Here he turns that attention inward, producing his most personal book to date.

First edition paperback published by Melbourne University Press, 2024. In excellent condition.