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Cover of Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Go Set A Watchman

Harper Lee

  • 304 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 2015
  • 32 editions
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1 About this book

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch -- "Scout" -- returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her.

Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past -- a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee.

  • Race relations
  • Political fiction
  • Historical fiction
  • Domestic fiction
  • Family life
  • Fathers and daughters
  • Nineteen fifties
  • Girls

2 About Harper Lee

1926–2016

Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) was an American novelist whose 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and became a classic of modern American literature. She assisted her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). An earlier draft of Mockingbird, set at a later date, Go Set a Watchman, was published in July 2015 as a sequel.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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