Amazon.de"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leadi ng to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior , said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gav e us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, d uring the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finc h, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual tr ial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harp er Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of rac e, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town , Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before S cout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with hi s aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a pe ek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Maye lla Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's conscio usness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find t hemselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ug ly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to ove rcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he k nows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind " when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one cla ssic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber 0

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Personen: Lee, Harper