Synopsis
This is the unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior—to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.- ★★★★★
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Mindful Muslim Review
Mindful Muslim Reader recommends this book as a standalone though it is part of a series (the sequel was published 50 years later from a manuscript found among the author’s papers just before her death).
A classic for all the right reasons, this well-loved book explores the deep racial prejudice of a small rural town in the Jim-Crow South. The reader is drawn into the lives of Maycomb’s residents—both black and white—through a window into their joys and sorrows. The narrator, a young girl coming of age, examines the ugly reality of racial hatred through the naive eyes of a child who knows no other world. The true hero of the story, however, is her father, Atticus. He guards his honor and word above all else, for what he desires most is to leave his children with the ability to hold their heads high with the knowledge they always acted with moral courage.
Atticus instills in his children a deep commitment to adab—the appropriate behavior at the appropriate times—toward the most important members of society and the least. When his daughter comments about the way a poor schoolmate eats, he teaches her that honoring a guest is more important than “proper” table manners. When his son destroys the prized flower bushes of a cowardly neighbor who cruelly taunts him, Atticus opens his son’s eyes to her true strength and courage. And when the justice system throws a black man to the mercy of a desperate young white woman who cannot escape her circumstances of poverty and privation, Atticus shows his children a critical fulfillment of adab—to be “civilized”—by shining the light of hope on the darkness of cruel injustice.
Though some have accused the author of creating a fantasy character—perhaps even a false hero—who could never have existed in the real world of racial segregation, the beauty of fiction lies in its ability to allow us to imagine a world in which such a character could exist, one who was respected because he never gave up on his principles, never settled for the status quo, and never allowed his children to live in a world where hope wasn’t possible. This book earns our Gold Star.
