Rukmini Bhaya Nair

My prediction: Scout's tone of voice will remain much the same. This is because the events described are already in the past when To Kill a Mockingbird opens. Scout is quite likely to be a writer who is still struggling with the lasting moral dilemmas that her childhood encounters presented her with. As I see it, however, the bitter sweet lessons of her childhood will have been absorbed. The mature Scout will know that justice and truth do not always prevail but they have to be fought for anyway, as Atticus does when he defends a black man and loses, even though he has proven Tom's innocence. Scout may not be a lawyer by profession in this novel, given the gender truth of the times, but she will stand up for things. The adult Scout will no more be a cynic than her childhood avatar.

Will she leave behind the "tired old town" of Maycomb, though? Well, she might leave it for a bit, as author Harper Lee did, but only to return to document the odd foibles of its citizens. As the child in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is impetuous and pugnacious. But the adult Scout will, I think, be calmer yet still be arguing with Atticus about right and wrong. She will be living in the same house but she will not be contemplating marriage. Perhaps her brother Jem will be married but her relationship with him will still be deep. He will be cast as her steady confidant.

What about Boo, though, easily the most intriguing character in To Kill a Mockingbird? Will he figure in Go Set A Watchman? In my view, Boo will either be a baffling absence or the central presence in this novel. Harper Lee, of course, famously declared in her interview to Oprah Winfrey: "I am Boo", referring perhaps to her reclusive life. But if Harper Lee is Boo, who is Scout?

Ashok Banker

The excitement over reading a sequel to a classic beloved novel is somewhat overshadowed by my concern as an author about an author's moral rights. While I'd love to speculate on Scout and her continuing story, it bears pointing out that in the book she was already a grown woman reminiscing about how she now understood what happened years earlier when she was a child. More than another novel about Scout, it's Harper Lee's own unwillingness to publish this sequel for half a century that takes centre stage in my mind.

In 2013, Harper Lee sued her literary agent for allegedly tricking her into assigning him the copyright of To Kill a Mockingbird. In 2013, Harper Lee's sister Alice, who handled all her interests, passed away. This left Harper Lee without an agent or de facto manager of her interests. Now we have the news of the 55-year-old sequel being published in July 2015...

It's difficult to swallow the publisher's claims that now, at 88, the author would be "happy" to see the sequel she had shut away for half a century trotted out and published as a miraculous "find". Is the publisher's claim that the manuscript was only just "discovered" completely kosher? I doubt it. It's not as if they have no self-interest in the matter. A sequel now would not only bring in huge sales - the book is already the No.1-selling title at Amazon, months before release - it would boost sales of the first book, still selling a whopping one million-plus copies yearly, and then there's the income from film adaptations and other media. It's a huge bonanza commercially.

To sum up my view: I think Scout would strongly disapprove. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great, great book, its reputation towers above contemporary literature. I think the move to turn it into a Golden Goose fattened over 55 years for the kill is in very poor taste.

Ashwin Sanghi

Frankly, I'm not too sure if I ever want to read Go Set a Watchman. As I understand it, Harper Lee wrote this book in the mid-1950s, several years before she published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. Watchman was put aside when Lee's editor suggested that she write a new novel from the perspective of a young Scout Finch. It was this particular suggestion that eventually resulted in Mockingbird. In that sense, Watchman is a prequel now being presented to us as a sequel.

I am told that Watchman is being published without any modifications to the original. I cannot but help wonder how much the character and persona of Scout Finch changed between Watchman and Mockingbird. As you will recall, Jean Louise (Scout) Finch is a tomboy and fiercely protective of her father, even willing to fight on his behalf when others deride him as a "nigger lover". She is smart and eager to learn.

The story of Mockingbird is the story of Scout. She is the narrator of the tale and every other character is presented to us from Scout's point of view. It is precisely for this reason that I would have preferred that Scout's future life be left to the reader's imagination. I always imagined that she would be someone fighting for the underdog, standing up to the injustices of the world. But what if that's not how Harper Lee had originally envisioned Scout?

The truth is that what interests me (as a writer of conspiracy fiction) is the story behind the story. The conspiracy theory around Mockingbird has always been the notion that Lee's friend Truman Capote had written Mockingbird, not Lee. Watchman will either put out the rumours or fuel them even further. In my view, that is an infinitely more interesting concern than how Scout turned out!

Githa Hariharan

A grown up Scout: luckily she would have grown up into a time when she could continue to wear "boy's clothes", and even, perhaps, with style. She would have gone through a phase of wanting to leave the small town behind. Not just the usual suspects, the bigots who can only see the colour of skin, never the person before them; but the liberal yet somehow respectable Atticus, and Boo, always afraid of life.

Maybe she goes through a more radical time, taking the Atticus line to its logical conclusion, demanding more from it than he does. She would be estranged from him then; maybe they fight every time they speak. I see them talking on the phone, not making visits home. Years later, I also see her coming back to the town, trying, all over again, to understand where she comes from, and the place that made her what she is.