To Kill a Mockingbird - Pulitzer Prize

'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' Lawyer Atticus Finch gives this 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 1930s. 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 ... A benchmark of classic American literature, To Kill A Mockingbird approaches the highly sensitive topic of racism in 1930s America with humour, warmth and compassion, making it widely recognised as one of the best books of the twentieth century and in American literature.

Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025.

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South-and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred

One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father-a crusading local lawyer-risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Rezension:

"A powerful and enduring piece of literature." - Boston Globe

"The names Scout and Atticus-and, perhaps above all, the name Harper-reflect a respect not just for the arc of history, but for the hope that it does indeed bend toward justice." - The Atlantic

"One of the most-if not the most-beloved of American novels." - New Yorker

"A seminal American story, a touchstone of racial tolerance. . . . It's a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups. . . and grownups feel like children in their petty grievances and prejudices." - USA Today

"The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only in the plot or characters; the book is a mirror, a source of endless and revelatory conversation about who we are and have been as a country." - Washington Post

"The rare classic that speaks to all ages about the less triumphant aspects of American history." - Time

"A first novel of such rare excellence that it will no doubt make a great m any readers slow down to relish more fully its simple distinction. . . . A novel of strong contemporary national significance." - Chicago Tribune

"All of the tactile brilliance and none of the precocity generally supposed to be standard swamp-warfare issues for Southern writers. . . . Novelist Lee's prose has an edge that cuts through cant, and she teaches the reader an astonishing number of useful truths about little girls and about Southern life." - Time (1960 review)