What lies behind that most mysterious of gates

“Memory is circular,” Mark Baker wrote, in the introduction to the 20th anniversary edition of The Fiftieth Gate, “and in its circularity, connects to other stories that have unfolded in the past two decades since the publication of this book. It is up to us – he continued - to find ways of bringing light into the dark places of the world – be it Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur or Syria – and to find new understandings of what lies behind that most mysterious of gates where all of us inhabit the one room”.

I am here to talk about fact and fiction in The Fiftieth Gate, and it’s a testament to that book’s enduring greatness that everything that can be said on that specific topic applies equally to the universal human experience of meaning-making.

It is also a testament to the book that it defies genre. Like its author, its concerns are too universal, its hard-won insights too personal, and the form of their expression too authentic and original, to fit into the oversimplified demands of a pre-determined, one-size-fits-all, externally-policed identity.