Морис Ги: Жизнь и творчество новозеландского писателя

New Zealand novelist (born 1931)

Maurice Gough Gee (born 22 August 1931) is a New Zealand novelist. He is one of New Zealand's most distinguished and prolific authors, having written over thirty novels for adults and children, and has won numerous awards both in New Zealand and overseas, including multiple top prizes at the New Zealand Book Awards, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the UK, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, the Robert Burns Fellowship and a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. In 2003 he was recognised as one of New Zealand's greatest living artists across all disciplines by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, which presented him with an Icon Award. Gee's novel Plumb (1978) was described by the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature to be one of the best novels ever written in New Zealand. His mother, Harriet Lyndahl Gee , was a socialist and an aspiring writer who had some of her work published, including a children's picture book called Mihi and the Last of the Moas (1943), and his father, Leonard Gee, was a carpenter. He was the middle child of their three sons. Gee was also the grandson of controversial Presbyterian turned Unitarian minister James Chapple, later to be the inspiration for Gee's character George Plumb in his Plumb trilogy (1978). Gee attended Henderson Primary School and Avondale College, and completed BA and MA degrees at the University of Auckland, which subsequently recognised him with a Distinguished Alumni Award in 1998, and an honorary Doctorate of Literature in 2004. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University of Wellington in 1987.

Gee began writing at university, and had short stories published in New Zealand journals Landfall and Mate. In January 1960 and December 1961 he was awarded literary grants by the New Zealand Literary Fund. His first published novel was The Big Season (1962), a novel about a rugby player who becomes interested in a burglar and the burglar's girlfriend. It had themes of violence and tension, and was described by The New Zealand Herald as "not always pleasant, but certainly forceful and sincere". Gee himself was a keen rugby player and the games in the novel were inspired by his own experiences. During this fellowship he wrote his second novel, A Special Flower (1965). After the fellowship he trained as a librarian and in the 1960s and 1970s worked at the Alexander Turnbull Library, the Napier library and several libraries in Auckland. This novel was later adapted into the critically acclaimed film of the same name by director Brad McGann in 2004. Gee followed this novel with a collection of short stories, A Glorious Morning, Comrade (1974), which won the prize for fiction at the 1976 New Zealand Book Awards, and a further novel Games of Choice (1976).

Gee's novel Plumb, published in 1978, is his best known work for adults, and is considered one of the best novels ever written in New Zealand. and the top prize for fiction at both the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards and the New Zealand Book Awards in 1979. Meg won the top prize for fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards in 1982. It has been adapted into a 1981 television miniseries, a 2009 film and a stage show. In 2004 Under the Mountain was the recipient of the Gaelyn Gordon Award, awarded annually to a "much loved" New Zealand children's book that did not win any awards at the time of its publication. It was followed by other children's books, including notably the science fiction trilogy beginning with The Halfmen of O (1982), which won the AIM Children's Book Awards Book of the Year Award in 1983, and Motherstone (1985), which was awarded the Esther Glen Award by LIANZA. In order to improve his income, Gee began working in television writing, including writing for 11 episodes of soap opera Close to Home and episodes of police drama Mortimer's Patch. Two of his children's books, The Fire Raiser (1986) and The Champion (1989) originated as television projects. and The Burning Boy (1990). The Burning Boy was awarded the top prize for fiction at the 1991 New Zealand Book Awards.]] The publication of Gee's tenth novel, Going West (1992), cemented his reputation as one of the best writers in New Zealand. It won the top prize for fiction at the 1993 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards. Gee was the 1992 recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, a literary fellowship that enables the recipient to work in Menton, France, for part of the year, where Katherine Mansfield herself lived and worked in the early 20th century. A decade later it was adapted by Larry Parr into the 2004 film Fracture. The film was praised by Christchurch newspaper The Press as "competent, confident and complex". won the AIM Children's Book of the Year award and the Esther Glen Award. It was controversial for its content and portrayal of violence, with Gee himself describing it as a "psychological thriller for children". In 1998 he published Living Bodies, a novel for adults that was awarded both the top prize for fiction and the Deutz Medal at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards that year. In the early 2000s, Gee's novels included Ellie and the Shadow Man (2001), which was short listed for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2002, and The Scornful Moon (2003), which was short listed for Best Book in the South Pacific & South East Asian Region of the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and a runner up in the fiction category at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. His 2005 novel Blindsight won the Deutz Medal, the top prize for fiction and (jointly) the Readers' Choice Award at the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2015, Rachel Barrowman's biography of Gee, Maurice Gee: Life and Work, was published by Victoria University Press. The book was critically well received, and Gee said Barrowman's research was "thorough, unrelenting, illuminating — illuminating even for me". The Severed Land was published in 2017, and received the top award for young adult fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in that same year. The memoir is in three parts: the first about his parents' lives, the second about his own childhood and adolescent years, and the third about his wife. He said it is "almost certainly" going to be his last book. It was shortlisted for the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non Fiction at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Gee's novels are commonly set in New Zealand, often in fictitious versions of Henderson, where he grew up. The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (2006) said that each of Gee's novels "bountifully gives us a rich vision of some region and aspect of New Zealand life, and of human life in general Yet there is always an awareness of living at the edge of an abyss: one false move and we shall leave this abundance for nothingness." Gee married his wife Margareta in 1970, having met in 1966 at the Alexander Turnbull Library where she worked. They have two adult daughters together, Abigail and Emily. Abigail works as an animator, and Emily is a writer who has published fantasy and historical novels. Gee considers himself an evolutionary humanist.

"In at the Death", Kiwi (1955): 21–26. "The Widow", Landfall 9 (1955): 196–213. In GMC, CS. "Evening at Home", Arena 45 (1956): 23–24. "The Quarry", Arena 46 (1957): 6–10, 13. "A Sleeping Face", Landfall 11 (1957): 194–221. In GMC, CS. "A Girl in Blue", Mate 2 (1958): 10–19. "While the Flag was Up", Arena 50 (1958–59): 13–17, 28. "The Losers", Landfall 13 (1959): 120–47. In Landfall Country: Work from Landfall, 1947–1961. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1962, 24–56. In New Zealand Short Stories, Second Series. Ed. C. K. Stead. London: Oxford UP, 1966, 255–95. In GMC, CS. "Facade", Mate 4 (1960): 26–33. "Schooldays", Mate December 1960: 2–11. In GMC, CS. "The Champion", Landfall 20 (1966): 113–25. In GMC, CS. "Down in the World", Landfall 21 (1967): 296–302. In GMC, CS. "A Retired Life", Landfall 23 (1969): 101–16. In GMC, CS.