You may have read this but it certainly deserves another read. It’s the sort of book that becomes more profound with each reading. It is quite simply brilliant, a tale of prejudices and injustice in small town America which should be part of everyone’s collection.
To Kill a Mockingbird: 50th Anniversary Collector's Hardback Edition Synopsis
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird'. Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.
Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, a village that is still her home. She attended local schools and the University of Alabama. Before she started writing she lived in New York, where she worked in the reservations department of an international airline. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, two honorary degrees and various other literary awards. Her chief interests apart from writing are nineteenth-century literature and eighteenth-century music, watching politicians and cats, travelling and being alone. She died in February 2016.