To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Boldly perceptive, eight-year-old Jean Louise Finch, aka Scout, reveals the shameful racism of a small town in Alabama in the early ’30s.
Scout’s father, Atticus, a widowed lawyer, brings up his two children with liberal values and a lot of freedom. But when he agrees to defend a black man, who is accused of raping a white girl, much of the community turns against him. Scout and her brother Jem are drawn into the controversy.
Meanwhile, the children have been terrified for years by a reclusive neighbour. Is he insane? Or evil? They dare each other to play tricks on him. Then, at the end of the book, he appears – totally unexpectedly. And another prejudice is shattered.
Lee very cleverly uses an innocent child’s perception and initiative to expose the deep-seated injustice and immorality of the white community in the southern States.