Early career: 1950 to 1977 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).
Plumb and children's fiction: 1978 to 1991 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. In 1998, he published
Live 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 was "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. ==Style and themes==