John Grisham In His Own Words:

Born in Mississippi, the “racist capital” of America.

Alleged he was among the many young white Americans of his generation that were brainwashed to hate and stereotype the blacks, the Jews and the Hispanics.

Realized the errors of the brainwashing during his college days and resolved to change his attitude toward “other” people.

Finished law school in 1981.

Now effectively liberal, he ignored the allure of corporate law firms to return to his Mississippi state to open a private practice and become what he called a “street lawyer”.

Almost starved to death due to poor earnings from his practice.

He started to envy the “big boys” in corporate law practice.

While struggling to survive financially, he started to write the manuscript of “A Time to Kill” with Canton, Mississippi as its setting.

Several copies of the manuscript were sent to big-time publishing houses for consideration.

But all he got were rejection slips. This was because of the script’s “sensitive” story-line with a black hero that challenged the American “core values” and got away with it.

Frustrated, he invested his hard-earned savings of $5,000 in self-publishing the manuscript.

Going from one place to the other, he sold from the trunk of his rickety car and, finally, was able to sell one thousand copies.

It was in 1989 that an editor with a major publishing house (one of those that earlier rejected the same book) came upon a copy and signed a book deal with the struggling lawyer.

The book became an instant success and went on to become number one on New York best-seller list.

In 1996, the book was adapted into a movie starring Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland, Kevin Spacey and Patrick McGoohan. It became a U.S. box-office hit, raking about $100 million.

He considers the book as his most powerful work till date even though he has since written 30 books.

He however became an instant enemy of the so-called white supremacist movement.

(The above was taken from a BBC World Service interview of John Grisham at the United States embassy in London on April 6, 2013).