Watchman soars

NEW YORK — Critics dismissed it as a rough draft for To Kill a Mockingbird and readers despaired over an aging, racist Atticus Finch.

But Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman is still a million seller. HarperCollins says Watchman in its combined print, electronic and audio formats has sold 1.1 million copies in the U.S. and Canada, a figure that includes first-week sales and months of pre-orders.

The publisher stunned the world in February when it revealed a second novel was coming from Lee, who had long insisted Mockingbird would be her only book.

HarperCollins, where authors have included Michael Crichton and Veronica Roth, is calling Watchman its fastest seller in its history. Watchman was completed before Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Mockingbird, but is set in the same Alabama community 20 years later.