To Kill a Mockingbird

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 exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a coming-of-age story, an anti-racist novel, a historical drama of the Great Depression and a sublime example of the Southern writing tradition. 

 Review: Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable. * Truman Capote *

There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written * Sunday Times *

No one ever forgets this book * Independent *

One of the best novels I remember ... uniquely unsentimental * Guardian *

Her book is lifted ... into the rare company of those that linger in the memory * Bookman *

Prizes: Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1961 (United States).