Reese Witherspoon is due to record the audio version of Harper Lee’s forthcoming book, “Go Set a Watchman”.

UK publisher William Heinemann announced this morning that the Oscar-winning actor would narrate Lee’s unexpected return to the world of fiction. “As a Southerner, it is an honour and a privilege to give voice to the Southern characters who inspired by childhood love of reading, Scout and Atticus Finch,” said Witherspoon, who won the best actress Oscar for the role of June Carter in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. “I am eager for readers to be transported to a pivotal time in American history in the manner that only Harper Lee’s gorgeous prose can deliver,” she told USA Today.

“Go Set a Watchman”, who was only introduced to the public this February, is one of the most anticipated novels of the year, already selling for less than half price on Amazon.co.uk more than two months before its 14 July release. It has been said by its publishers to feature an adult Scout returning to the town of her childhood, where she will “grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand both her father’s attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood”.

Very little is known about the novel, which Lee has said in a statement was discovered by her friend and lawyer Tonja Carter after she set it aside in the 1950s. After reading “Go Set a Watchman,” her editor advised her to write a story from the perspective of Scout as a child. The resulting novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird”, went on to win the 1961 Pulitzer prize for fiction, after which Lee fell silent for more than 50 years.