The enduring power of Harper Lee
In an era of instant information when you can buy a novel from your couch in one click, when people prefer to read blogs rather than books, and being a writer has lost its once prestigious lustre, there are very few authors who have the power to get bookstores around the world to open their doors at midnight on the day of publication.
Harper Lee is one of those authors despite having published just one book. That’s about to change with the release of Go Set a Watchman, 55 years after the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning To Kill a Mockingbird. The event has whipped fans of Lee’s only novel into a frenzy of anticipation, although it has not been without controversy. The fact the book was ‘discovered’ just two months after the death of Lee’s lawyer sister Alice, seen as the protector of her legacy, was seen by many as suspicious. The circumstances surrounding the release of the book are unclear and many have suggested the 89-year-old Lee, who is almost deaf and blind and resident in an assisted-living facility in Alabama, may not have had full control of the decision to publish it. State investigators interviewed Lee in response to a claim of elder abuse in relation to the publication of the book but announced in April that the suspicion was unfounded.
