• Harper Lee, the elusive novelist whose child’s-eye view of racial injustice in a small Southern town, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” became standard reading for millions of young people and an Oscar-winning film, has died.
• To Kill a Mockingbird,” published in 1960, is the story of a girl nicknamed Scout growing up in a Depression-era Southern town. A black man has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman, and Scout’s father, the resolute lawyer Atticus Finch, defends him despite threats and the scorn of many.
• The book quickly became a best-seller.
• By 2015, its sales were reported by HarperCollins to be more than 40 million worldwide, making it one of the most widely read American novels of the 20th century.
• “Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books,” she wrote.
• By 2014, she had given in to the digital age and allowed her novel to come out as an e-book, calling it “‘Mockingbird’ for a new generation.”
• A new play adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” will land on Broadway during the 2017-18

“Few contemporary literary American novels have such a sweep and fewer have the confidence to take on social issues in the way Harper Lee does. Much literary writing today about racism is cloaked in irony or in so much lyricism that it becomes gaseous. Lee refuses to hide behind aesthetics. Her writing is so beautiful, so steady and even and limpid, that she might have evaded confronting these tribalisms head-on, but she doesn’t.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“From my sister’s nightstand, I grabbed the paperback she’d been yapping about, To Kill a Mockingbird. The cover had a Technicolor picture of Gregory Peck and some little girl in overalls. I opened the book and read the first sentence, ‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.’ Three days later, I finished the book. A novel had never kidnapped me before. Until Mockingbird, I’d had no idea that literature could exert so strong a power.” –Wally Lamb 

“I remember reading a portion of it thinking, reluctantly, this is really good. But I couldn’t admit it… It’s hard to imagine Empire Falls being written without To Kill a Mockingbird, because I don’t think Tick could have existed without Scout.” —Richard Russo

“Every time I go back, I’m impressed more by the simplicity of the prose . . . Although it’s plainly written from the point of view of an adult, looking back through a child’s eyes, there’s something beautifully innocent about the point of view, and yet it’s very wise.” —Mark Childress

“I promised myself that when I grew up and I was a man, I would try to do things as good and noble as what Atticus had done for Tom Robinson.” —Scott Turow

To Kill a Mockingbird is probably in the top three of books like that, where you utterly live in the book, and walk around in the book, and know everyone down to the ground in the book, and then leave, and then inevitably come back. I can’t imagine anyone I like reading To Kill a Mockingbirdand then not rereading it.” —Anna Quindlen

“I think it is our national novel.” —Oprah Winfrey

To Kill a Mockingbird

Author: Harper Lee

ISBN: 9780099466734

Lawyer Atticus Finch defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic, Puliter Prize-winning novel—a black man charged with the rape of a white woman. Through the eyes of Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unanswering honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930’s.

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The Catcher in the Rye

Author: J.D. Salinger

ISBN: 9780241950432

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it’s relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the ‘phony’ aspects of society, and the ‘phonies’ themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it’s a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger’s style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliché.

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Nelle Harper Lee is an American novelist widely known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird which deals with the racism she observed as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Though Lee only published this single book for half a century, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature.

The novel To Kill a Mockingbird mainly revolves around a small family of three — Atticus Finch, an attorney, and his two children, Scout and Jem. As the novel proceeds certain characters are linked with the three main characters to form a dramatic story of events, attitudes, prejudices and values.

The novel is set is the quiet town of Maycomb; but the serenity is only superficial. The town is comprised of three communities: the white folk, the black community, and the ‘white trash’. Outwardly there is peace among the three, but underneath prevails a combination of hostility, racial prejudices, and friendlessness.

Jem and Scout go to school together. On their way to school, they pass the Radley house; it is a terrifying place to them, for it houses Boo Radley, who has been labeled a lunatic. At the same time, their curiosity pushes them to try out ways to make Boo come out of the house. Their overtures are, however, suppressed by Atticus who does not want them to torment Boo.

The main plot of the novel revolves around the trial in which Atticus defends Tom Robinson, a black man, who has been accused of having molested a white girl, Mayella Ewell. She is part of the ‘white-trash’ community. The children follow the case proceedings avidly and are inconsolable when their father loses the case.

The case is lost simply because it was still impossible (despite statutory laws protecting them) for a black man to attain victory over a white in the South. This amply reveals the deeply ingrained racial prejudices still prevalent among the white society which cannot give an equal status to a black.

The relation between the children and Boo Radley resurfaces at the end, when it is Boo who saves them from imminent death at the hands of the vicious Bob Ewell. It is ultimately revealed that Boo is not a lunatic, but a simple-minded person with failing health and a childish attachment for Scout Finch and Tom Robinson.

The story of the mockingbird recited by Atticus is linked to the theme of the novel. It is considered a sin to kill a mockingbird, since it is a harmless bird which only sings to please others. Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are also harmless people. By letting Tom die, the sin of killing a mockingbird has been committed. But by not revealing the facts of Boo’s heroism in rescuing the children, the sin is avoided, and Boo is left to his seclusion. Tom’s death is a defeat of justice and an insult to humanity, and the readers can judge for themselves how much of a sin it is.

The maturing of Scout and Jem is portrayed as well as the exemplary character of Atticus, who is without any racial prejudices or biased views. He is a highly ethical character, who chooses to fight against the ‘old traditions’ of his own community.

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