Harper Lee — “a genius of one book.” Her only widely known work is the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Yet for this book—translated into almost every language in the world—the writer received the Pulitzer Prize. The book was named the best American novel of the 20th century by “Library Journal,” and later brought the author the highest civilian award in the United States: the Medal of Freedom.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960) is a moving story of a family living in a fictional small town in the south of America, in the state of Alabama.
The time period is the 1930s, the era of the Great Depression. The story is told from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl.
The main character, Jean Finch, lives with her father Atticus, a lawyer, and her brother Jim. They have a friend, Dill, and one enemy shared by all three—our neighbor with the nickname Boo Radley.
The world as seen through a child’s eyes—complex, contradictory, ambiguous—passes before the reader. In this world everything is mixed together: children’s fears and adult problems, a thirst for justice and bitter reality, racial issues of the American South and the complexities of one particular family.
At the center of the plot is a trial of a Black man. He is accused of rape he did not commit. Atticus, Jean’s father, acts as the defense attorney and fights with all his might so that justice will prevail.