NEW YORK — Harper Lee’s unexpected new novel offers an unexpected and startling take on an American literary saint, Atticus Finch.

“Go Set a Watchman” is set in the 1950s, 20 years after Lee’s celebrated “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and finds Atticus hostile to the growing civil rights movement. In one particularly dramatic encounter with his now-adult daughter, Scout, the upright Alabama lawyer who famously defended a black man in “Mockingbird” condemns the NAACP as opportunists and troublemakers and labels blacks as too “backward” to “share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship.”

“Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ’em”? argues the man portrayed by Oscar-winner Gregory Peck in the 1962 film adaptation of “Mockingbird.”

“They’ve made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they’re far from it yet.”

“Watchman” was written before “Mockingbird” and is only Lee’s second book, one that Lee’s attorney, Tonja Carter, has said she stumbled upon last year. It will be published Tuesday.

Publisher HarperCollins, anticipating concerns that Atticus’ harsh talk will disillusion millions of fans, issued a statement late Friday saying, “The question of Atticus’s racism is one of the most important and critical elements in this novel, and it should be considered in the context of the book’s broader moral themes.”

“’Go Set a Watchman’ explores racism and changing attitudes in the South during the 1950s in a bold and unflinching way,” the statement reads. “At its heart, it is the coming-of-age story of a young woman who struggles to reconcile the saintly figure of her beloved father with her own more enlightened views. In ‘Go Set a Watchman,’ Scout takes center stage as we witness her anger toward and stand against prejudice and social injustice.”

Rarely has news of a novel been so celebrated and so dreaded since HarperCollins shocked the world in February by announcing a second Harper Lee novel was coming, an event her fans had long given up on.