After having written the classic American novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," a book that's been one of the most important in the last fifty years, Harper Lee's second novel never came to fruition, as the writer has lived the rest of her life mostly secluded in Alabama - but that's all about to change soon.
For decades, the book against racial segregation and injustice has inspired people all over the world, and fans waited for Harper Lee's second novel to be published, though she never gave any clues as to whether this would happen - until now, when she announced a sequel in the story of Atticus Finch.
According to The New York Times, the iconic Pulitzer Prize winner announced that she had recently written a Harper Lee second novel starring the same beloved characters as the original one: lawyer and father Atticus Finch (based on Lee's attorney father, who defended two black men accused of murder) and his daughter Scout, partly based on the writer herself.
As CNN reports, the Harper Lee second novel will be published a full 55 years after "To Kill a Mockingbird," the only book the Alabama writer ever published, which won the Pulitzer at the time and has been considered one of the American classics ever since, sparking a great number classroom conversations for many decades about human rights, decency, racial equality, justice and even parenthood.
The new book, entitled "Go Set a Watchman," is set 20 years after the original story in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, where Jean Louise Finch (Scout) visits her father Atticus. Considering the fact that the original film is set on the Depression, the new one will be in the mid 50s.
Harper Lee's second novel will be released in the summer, in an undisclosed date of July.
"In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman," said the award-winning writer, according to Slate. "It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became To Kill a Mockingbird) from the point of view of the young Scout."
As NBC News reports, the reason Harper Lee's second novel had gone unpublished until now is that the manuscript was thought to be lost, though it was recently rediscovered.
