The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel

Barbara Kingsolver

Oct 2009 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection

“Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

The Poisonwood Bible established Barbara Kingsolver, recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters, as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa.

The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil.

The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

Ratings and reviews

I read this book some years ago and it has stuck with me. There was this one point in the story after they are back in the states that really made me examine myself and the things that we take for granted. This is a must read

Fantastic story. It reads like a multifaceted eye witness account of a family's death, and the rebirth of each of its members. It's so vivid and so earthy, I feel like I have been to the Congo and endured the trials of this family. It's just a wonderful, well written story.

Barbara Kingsolver transports the reader to an ancient and exotic realm where dream and mystery fuse with an empowering and wondrous landscape. A landscape of mind, imagination, and often brutal reality. The place is deepest Africa and love sets the stage for all that must be learned, acquired and painfully lost.

About the author

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, The Bean Trees, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and Coyote’s Wild Home, a children’s book co-authored with Lily Kingsolver. She also collaborated with family members on the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received numerous awards and honors including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Demon Copperhead, the National Humanities Medal, and most recently, the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.