To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and now fifty-five years later it will be receiving a sequel entitled Go Set a Watchman.
Harper Lee, the author of the novels, wrote the sequel in the 1950s, but set it aside in favor of To Kill a Mockingbird. It follows Scout, the little girl of Mockingbird as an adult. The book will be published on July, 14th, 2015.
The manuscript was rediscovered last year by Harper Lee herself. “In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman.”, Lee went on to say, “It features the character known as scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout”
Go Set a Watchman is set in the 1950s and is about Scout, Jean Louise Finch, returning to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, to see her father, the uptight lawyer Atticus Finch.
The press release said, “She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood,”
Lee originally wrote To Kill A Mockingbird right after she moved to New York. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film in 1962, which Gregory Peck won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Atticus Finch.
The book has sold more than 30 million copies, as of 2006. Until now, To Kill a Mockingbird was her only published novel.
Harper’s senior vice president and publisher, Jonathan Burnham, called “Go Set a Watchman” “a remarkable literary event.”
“The existence of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ was unknown until recently, and its discovery is an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ” he said in the statement. “Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee’s classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter’s relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s.”
Lee closed out her interview saying, “I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn’t realized it (the original book) had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it. After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years.”
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