Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s finest writers. He has written more than forty books for adults and young adults and has won several 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. His fifth novel Plumb, published in 1978, won the UK’s James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Maurice Gee’s young adult novels include The Fat Man, Orchard Street, Hostel Girl, Under the Mountain, The O Trilogy and The Salt Trilogy.