Harper Lee’s unexpected new novel offers a startling take on an American literary saint, Atticus Finch.
Go Set a Watchman is set in the 1950s, 20 years after Lee's celebrated To Kill a Mockingbird, and finds Atticus hostile to the growing civil rights movement. In one dramatic encounter with his now-adult daughter, Scout, the upright Alabama lawyer who famously defended a black man in Mockingbird condemns the NAACP as opportunists and troublemakers and labels blacks as too "backward" to "share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship".
Watchman was written before Mockingbird and is only Lee's second book, one that Lee's attorney, Tonja Carter, has said she stumbled upon last year. It will be published on Tuesday.
Publisher HarperCollins, anticipating concerns that Atticus’ harsh talk will disillusion millions of fans, issued a statement late Friday saying: “The question of Atticus’s racism is one of the most important ... elements ... and it should be considered in the context of the book’s broader moral themes.”
"At its heart, it is the coming-of-age story of a young woman who struggles to reconcile the saintly figure of her beloved father with her own more enlightened views. In Go Set a Watchman, Scout takes centre stage as we witness her anger toward and stand against prejudice and social injustice."
• Read our review of Go Set a Watchman on Thursday in Arts&Life
