In the most exciting news to come out of the literary world in a very long time, reclusive American author Harper Lee is all set to publish her second novel, 55 years after her first book, To Kill A Mockingbird, became a modern classic.
The new book is entitled Go Set A Watchman, and was written by Lee in the 1950s, before the publication of Mockingbird, but the manuscript was set aside, and considered lost until recently.
The novel includes many of the same characters from Mockingbird, and features plucky heroine Scout as an adult woman. Lee has said that she is “humbled and amazed” at the anticipation for the new novel.
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman. It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort,” she said in a statement.
“My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told.”
That novel became the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mockingbird. Lee has said in the past that she never wrote another, because she was afraid she would not be able to equal that book’s success.
The manuscript for Watchman was discovered last year, attached to a proof of To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Collins will publish it in July, and the company’s president has referred to it as a “brilliant book.”
The 88-year-old Lee lives a quiet life in her native Alabama. It’s believed that Mockingbird has sold in the region of 30 million copies during its lifespan.
via ABC News
Photo: Chris Somodevilla via Getty Images
Photo: Chris Somodevilla via Getty Images
