The great classic of American literature, beloved by adults and children alike. Celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2010.
THE ORIGINAL TEXT
‘Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird.’
A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel – a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with both compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, Atticus, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy.
Author Biography
Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a village that is still her home. She attended local schools and the University of Alabama. Before she started writing she lived in New York, where she worked in the reservations department of an international airline. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, two honorary degrees and various other literary awards. Her chief interests apart from writing are nineteenth-century literature and eighteenth-century music, watching politicians and cats, travelling and being alone. She was friends with Truman Capote who apparently was the inspiration for the character Dill in
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Reviews
No one ever forgets this book,Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable,There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written
