Well, this is unexpected.
Reclusive, 88-year-old novelist Harper Lee announced today that a sequel to her beloved classic To Kill a Mockingbird will hit bookstores this summer, a scant 55 years after the the publication of the first book.
Go Set a Watchman - which is set to be released on July 14 - will only be the second work that Lee has published.
Needless to say, she's not the most prolific author, and despite the fact that her first novel has endured as a favorite of young and old alike, Lee rarely makes public appearances.
So it came as something of a shock to the literary world when Lee issued a statement through her publisher today confirming that the long-rumored book - which details the adventures of protagonist Scout Finch 20 years after the events of Mockingbird - would actually see the light of day.
Lee says Watchman was actually completed before Mockingbird, but Lee was apparently not aware that a copy of the manuscript had survived until recently:
"In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman," Lee says. "It features the character of Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it was a pretty decent effort."
"My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became To Kill a Mockingbird) from the point of view of young Scout."
"I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized [the original book] had survived, so I was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it...I am humbled and amazed this will now be published after all these years."
Lee's first effort won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, has never been out of print, and has remained a staple in American classrooms for over five decades.
So we're gonna go out on a limb and say her second book might receive a slightly more favorable response than the Fifty Shades of Grey sequel.
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