‘Havana Requiem’ Wins 2013 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction

To add to to your summer reading list:

The 2013 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction goes to Stanford law professor Paul Goldstein for his novel Havana Requiem:

"The novel chronicles efforts by a lawyer, recovering alcoholic Michael Seeley, to help a group of aging Cuban jazz musicians and their families reclaim copyrights to their works. When his main client, Héctor Reynoso, goes missing, Seeley begins to realize that there is more to the story than music, and that a far deeper conspiracy is involved that might include both the Cuban secret police and his former law firm."

The prize, which is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law, is intended to recognize a work of fiction that “best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society."

The award jury included bestselling authors Michael Connelly (winner of the prize in 2012 for the thriller The Fifth Witness about the collapse of the U.S. mortgage industry)  and Richard North Patterson; U.S. talk show host Katie Couric; Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Dr. Sharon Malone, physician married to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The award is named after author Harper Lee, whose novel To Kill A Mockingbird, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

The prize is three years old. The first winner was John Grisham in 2011 for his novel The Confession.