In perhaps the biggest literary news of the 21st century, To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee has announced she will be releasing a sequel to her seminal debut in 2015.

“It’s a pretty decent effort,” she said of her soon to be released second novel, 55 years in the making, entitled Go Set a Watchman.

According to Harper, Go Set a Watchman is set roughly 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird and follows the young heroine from that novel, Scout, as an adult.

When Scout travels to her small Southern town of Maycomb, from New York City, to visit her father Atticus she is, Harper explained, “forced to 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.”

Stay tuned to The Booktopia Blog for all news as it comes to hand about this massive literary event. And while you’re waiting, why not flick through a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. It remains as relevant and enthralling as it ever was.

Grab a copy of Go Set a Watchman here

To Kill a Mockingbird

by Harper Lee

“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 Harper Lee’s classic novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man’s struggle for justice—but the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

One of the best-loved classics of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It has won the Pulitzer Prize, been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. It was also named the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians across the country (Library Journal). HarperCollins is proud to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication with this special hardcover edition.

Grab a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird here

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About the Contributor

Andrew Cattanach

Andrew Cattanach is a regular contributor to The Booktopia Blog. He has been shortlisted for The Age Short Story Prize and was named a finalist for the 2015 Young Bookseller of the Year Award. He enjoys reading, writing and sleeping, though finds it difficult to do them all at once.

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