To Kill A Mockingbird

The iconic modern classic and coming-of-age novel exploring racism in the American South.

'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 a serious crime.

Through the young yes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores 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.

Review

No one ever forgets this book ― Independent

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

There is humour as well as tragedy in this book, besides its faint note of hope for human nature; and it is delightfully written in the now familiar Southern tradition ― Sunday Times

It would be difficult to argue that Harper Lee's classic isn't one of the most - if not the most - beloved of American novels ― New Yorker

The enduring appeal of Mockingbird lies not only int he 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 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 -- Atlantic

A first novel of such rare excellence ― Chicago Tribune

Novels like To Kill a Mockingbird enlarge the heart and inspire the mind. They have the power uplift readers and enrich them - no matter where those readers live or how they worship or the color of their skin ― Boston Globe

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

A seminal American story, a touchstone of radical tolerance .. The book is a marvel, brilliantly structured, wonderfully told in the voice of Scout Finch, a stand-in for its tomboyish author as a child ... It's a book determined to make young readers feel like grownups ... and grownups feel like children ― USA Today

About the Author

Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. One of America’s most celebrated and influential writers, she is the author of the acclaimed novels To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman as well as the story and essay collection The Land of Sweet Forever, published posthumously in 2025. Lee was awarded numerous literary awards and honors including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died in 2016 at the age of eighty-nine.