Tuesday, January 31, 2017

A new novel from Maurice Gee

 

The Severed Land by Maurice Gee is the first YA novel from Maurice in 7 years and is available now at booksellers nationwide.

The Severed Land is truly gripping, brilliantly written, fresh and powerful – you really feel you’re in the hands of a master storyteller. You’re thrust into an utterly believable, vivid and scary world without any obvious descriptions or laboured explanations.

Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers for adults and children. He has won numerous literary awards, including the Wattie Award,the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award and the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award. Maurice Gee’s junior and young adult novels include The Fat Man, Orchard Street, Hostel Girl, Under the Mountain, The O Trilogy, and The Salt Trilogy.

RRP $19.99
Imprint: Penguin (NZ)

Footnote:
Many years ago I was a bookseller in Napier and Maurice Gee was the public librarian. We became good friends and then Maurice went to Nelson and became a fulltime author while I went to Auckland to enter world of book publishing.
We are now both retired and Maurice said the other day that he thought his writing life was over when part three of his Salt Trilogy, The Limping Man, was published in 2010. He said that this new work, The Severed Land  "came out of nowhere and surprised me". So this is a real bonus for all those many Maurice Gee fans out there.
Although described as a YA novel I warmly recommend it to adults also. A brilliant piece of writing.

2 comments:

Mark Hubbard said...

Graham!

Gee is my favourite writer so I'm well chuffed, but also confused.

I thought he retired from all writing?

Can we expect another adult novel?

Or was this written before his retirement, and it's only now made it's way through the publishing channel?

Mark Hubbard said...

Ah, just read your bit. This came out of the blue.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more blue.



The notion of a writer retiring is also a strange one. I understand you'd run out of something to say, but then, things crop up and surely you have something to say.