Remembering Maurice Gee - 1931-2025

Maurice Gee, one of New Zealand’s most highly-respected authors, passed away recently at the age of 93. After losing such an icon of NZ literature, we take a moment to reflect on Gee’s extraordinary literary career.

Maurice Gee grew up in West Auckland’s Henderson, a suburb that appears – thinly disguised – in many of his novels for adults. These stories often describe the lives of ordinary New Zealanders, their families, often dysfunctional, and their relationships. His children’s and young adult fiction were mostly science fiction or fantasy novels with one or two historical novels. Whether writing for adults or young people, Gee gave everything he wrote the same degree of care.

Gee garnered a huge collection of book awards over his career, including multiple NZ Book Awards (Plumb, Going West, Live Bodies, Blindsight); as well as NZ Book Awards for Children & YA for The Halfmen of O, Salt, and The Severed Land. He won the Esther Glen Award for Motherstone and The Fat Man and was given the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1992.

With so many award-winning books to his credit, it’s not surprising that Victoria University granted Gee an honorary Doctorate in Literature in 1987, as did the University of Auckland in 2004. In 2004 Gee was recognised with the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for fiction.

Two of Gee’s books have been adapted for screen. In My Father’s Den, a mystery-thriller published in 1972, hit our movie screens in 2004 and starred Matthew McFadyen, Miranda Otto and Emily Barclay. Gee’s children’s sci-fi/thriller. Under the Mountain, was televised in 1981, and made into a movie in 2008 staring Sam Neil.

If you haven’t read any of Maurice Gee’s books yet, you a lot to look forward to. Try Gee at his literary best with novels like the Plumb trilogy, Blindsight or Ellie and the Shadow Man. For stories full of family secrets, there’s In My Father’s Den and Access Road. Gee’s children’s books are eminently readable at any age – Under the Mountain has become a Kiwi classic, while The Halfmen of O and Salt are also gripping reads. Orchard Street, is a poignant coming of age story set during the time of the 1951 waterfront strike.

And what of the man himself? What were the events and experienced that inspired his writing? We are fortunate to have Rachel Barrowman’s authoritative Maurice Gee: Life and Work, published in 2015, as well as Maurice Gee’s memoir Memory Pieces.

Posted by JAM

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