To Kill a Mockingbird

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, To Kill a Mockingbird gave American literature one of its most enduring moral heroes in Atticus Finch, a small-town Alabama lawyer who defends a Black man falsely accused of rape. Narrated through the eyes of his young daughter Scout, the novel renders the cruelties of racial injustice with warmth, humor, and an unwavering moral clarity that has made it one of the most widely read and taught novels in the English language.

Published at the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, Harper Lee's novel channeled the national struggle for racial equality into a deeply personal Southern story. Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning portrayal of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation further embedded the character in the American cultural imagination, and the novel remains a touchstone for discussions of justice, empathy, and moral courage in American society.