The Poisonwood Bible
In 1959 the Baptist preacher Nathan Price drags his wife Orleanna and their four daughters from Bethlehem, Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, intending to baptize the heathens before the next dry season. He brings cake mix and a bolt of bright cloth and a fundamentalism so brittle it cannot accommodate a child's question, and he refuses to leave even as the country tips toward independence and the Mobutu coup makes the white missionary a target. Across thirty years and the rest of the twentieth century, the four Price daughters, the dutiful Rachel, the brilliant twins Leah and Adah, and the small unforgettable Ruth May, each tell their version of what the family did to itself in the name of God in a country no one in it ever bothered to learn. Barbara Kingsolver's 1998 novel is one of the great American books about colonial guilt, family failure, and the slow work of survival.
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In 1959, Baptist minister Nathan Price takes his wife Orleanna and their four daughters from Bethlehem, Georgia to a small village in the Belgian Congo on a year-long mission. The novel is narrated in turn by the women across decades, beginning with that first hot dry season under his Bible.
The Poisonwood Bible is fictional but built around the real political turmoil of the Belgian Congo and post-independence Zaire. Barbara Kingsolver researched the period extensively, including Patrice Lumumba's assassination.
The Poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and won the South African Boeke Prize. Barbara Kingsolver later won the Pulitzer for Demon Copperhead in 2023.
The Poisonwood Bible was written by Barbara Kingsolver, published in 1998 by Proa.
The Poisonwood Bible is 576 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Poisonwood Bible takes most readers 9 to 12 hours to finish.
The Poisonwood Bible is a standalone novel by Barbara Kingsolver, not part of a series.
The Poisonwood Bible is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.