Dear Editor,
On Friday, via the news media we learnt of the death of Harper Lee, the novelist whose book gave us a child’s-eye view of racial injustice in a small Southern town in the United States of America. To Kill a Mockingbird, her famous novel, became standard reading for millions of young people and an Oscar-winning film too with Gregory Peck in the lead role.
We were told that Harper Lee was 89 when she died. Her book was published in 1960 and I read it when I was at Annandale Secondary School on the East Coast of Demerara at a time when we in this country were experiencing racial disturbances.
It was also reported that according to HarperCollins the book’s sales were more than forty million worldwide, making it one of the most widely read American novels of the 20th century. When the Library of Congress did a survey in 1991 on books that had affected people’s lives, To Kill a Mockingbird was second only to the Bible.
Yours faithfully,
Rooplall Dudhnath
