The Poisonwood Bible
New York Times Bestseller - Pulitzer Prize Finalist - 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 Distinguished 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.
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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 Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and its Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.
"There are few ambitious, successful and beautiful novels. Lucky for us, we have one now, in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible . . . this awed reviewer hardly knows where to begin." -- Jane Smiley, Washington Post Book World
"Fully realized, richly embroidered, triumphant." -- Newsweek
"Kingsolver's powerful new book is actually an old-fashioned 19th-century novel, a Hawthornian tale of sin and redemption and the 'dark necessity' of history." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"A powerful new epic . . . She 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
"Powerful . . . Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words." -- Time
"Beautifully written . . . Kingsolver's tale of domestic tragedy is more than just a well-told yarn . . . Played out against the bloody backdrop of political struggles in Congo that continue to this day, it is also particularly timely." -- People
"Tragic, and remarkable. . . . A novel that blends outlandish experience with Old Testament rhythms of prophecy and doom." -- USA Today
"The book's sheer enjoyability is given depth by Kingsolver's insight and compassion for Congo, including its people, and their language and sayings." -- Boston Globe
"Compelling, lyrical and utterly believable." -- Chicago Tribune
