Bookworms in Bahrain can get their hands on a copy of Harper Lee’s much awaited second novel.

‘Go Set A Watchman’ was released on Tuesday (July 14) and is widely regarded as the sequel to the classic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

The only store believed to be stocking the book so far is Virgin Megastore in City Centre Bahrain and a spokesman said it was bracing for a surge in sales over the Eid weekend.  

“We received the book and it was on shelves in Virgin on July 14 which was the release date,” he said.

“We have only sold a few copies so far but we are expecting a rush over the Eid weekend.”

Other bookshops in Bahrain told the GDN that shipments of the novel were expected to arrive following the Eid holidays next week.

The global release of ‘Go Set A Watchman’ was one of the biggest events in modern publishing history, more than half a century after ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ made its debut.

Two million copies of the controversial new book were sold prior to the release date and it set a record for first-day sales in the adult fiction category at Barnes and Noble, the largest US bookstore chain.

Sales have also doubled for Lee’s first novel, which is considered a 20th Century classic that defined racial injustice in the Depression-era South of the US and became standard reading in classrooms across the world.

The literary world was upended when HarperCollins announced it was publishing a second novel from Lee, seemingly discovered in her safe deposit box in still-unclear circumstances.

Lee wrote the manuscript in the late 1950s, but her then-editor suggested she recast the book from the childhood perspective of Scout, which in turn became “Mockingbird”.

‘Go Set A Watchman’ is set 20 years later and features many characters from the first novel, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

While some reviews are charitable about plotting Lee’s development as a writer, others have been scathing about the unedited draft, set in the era of the civil rights movement.

‘Go Set A Watchman’ is only the 89-year-old’s second book to be published. - TradeArabia News Service