Maurice Shadbolt is the author of eighteen books, beginning with 'The New Zealanders' in 1959; his novel 'Season of the Jew' won the Wattie Book of the Year award in 1987 and was named one of the year's most outstanding books by the New York Times. He has received the Watties Book of the Year Award four times, been President of PEN (1989), Burns Fellow at Otago University (1963) and Fellow in Letters at Auckland University (1987).