New York: Harper Lee’s unexpected new novel “Go Set A Watchman” has become the fastest selling book in the history of publisher HarperCollins, with more than 1.1 million copies sold in North America in the first week, the company said on Monday.

Besides it has been the most pre-ordered print title on Amazon.com since the last book in the "Harry Potter" series. Lee’s hometown has put on a festive look to greet the new novel from the authoress after about five decades since the first one.

The novel was released on 14 July, 55 years after the author’s only other published work, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a classic story of racial injustice in the American South.

“Watchman,” written in the 1950s, was a first draft of “Mockingbird” with many of the same characters. It made headlines with its depiction of noble lawyer Atticus Finch as a racist and bigot, a stark contrast to the idealistic, younger Finch of “Mockingbird” who put his principles on the line to defend a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman.

HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp, said on Monday it had ordered reprints several times and now has a North American print run for ‘Watchman’ of more than 3.3 million. It did not give sales figures or print runs for the rest of the world.

“First week sales of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ have far exceeded our expectations,” Brian Murray, president and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers said in a statement. “We are thrilled to see readers responding to this historic new work from an iconic author like Harper Lee.”

Lee, now 89, withdrew from public life shortly after the success of “Mockingbird” and the 1962 Oscar-winning film version starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

Big as 'Harry Potter' in Amazon pre-orders

The online retailer said the novel, to be published on July 14, 55 years after Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was already the No. 1 best-selling book on the website.

It is the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.comsince J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in 2007 - the seventh and final novel about the British teenage boy wizard.

Amazon did not provide figures for either book but publisher Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, said it had ordered an initial U.S. print run of 2 million for “Go Set a Watchman.”

Harper astonished the literary world in February when it announced it would publish a book that only a few people knew existed.

Lee's hometown greets new novel

In the southern hometown of author Harper Lee, a freight truck unloaded the first of 7,000 copies of “Go Set a Watchman” at a small bookshop just ahead of midnight, minutes before Tuesday's release of Lee’s first published novel in 55 years.

Despite the changes in Finch’s character, all day Tuesday the real Maycomb plans to celebrate. There will be public readings at almost every corner, lawn parties with lemonade and mint juleps, and “Finch” fries and “Boo” burgers on offer at a local café.

There will be walking tours of the domed 1900-era courthouse, now a museum, that served as the model for Finch’s defense of a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman.

“It’s a full day,” said Amy Hill of the Monroe County Heritage Museum. “Miss Nelle really put us on the map and we’re excited about the new book.”

Flynt, who lectures on southern culture, will start reading “Watchman” out loud to any who’ll hear on Tuesday morning.

The book comes at a time when the nation is again in the grips of confronting the American South’s underbelly of racism after the slaying of nine parishioners at Charleston church at the hands of a white supremacist.

“The timing is accidental, but this is a conversation that America needs to have,” Flynt said. “When her first book came out in 1960, we were finally energized on race. It was part of everyone’s consciousness.”

Flynt says fans of Atticus Finch might have trouble accepting the older incarnation of him in “Watchman.”

“It’s a very different and flawed Atticus,” Flynt said. “You have an older man who was dealing with his world of the 1950s. We believed him to be a perfect man, only to find out that he has feet of clay up to his elbows.”

Flynt doesn’t expect “Go Set a Watchman” to be as popular as “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

But he believes it will be more real.