The Poisonwood Bible

By Barbara Kingsolver

Book Overview

New York Times Bestseller - An Oprah Book Club Pick

"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

Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story 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. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060175400
• ISBN13: 9780060175405
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Incredible Story

This is one of those books that consumes you just as much as you consume it. Most stories with multiple narrating characters have at least one that is less interesting than others, but not this one. I read it for the first time over a year ago, and I have not been able to stop thinking about it often, to the point where I felt I needed to buy a copy to own. This book will make you have lots of big feelings and will continue to be compelling long after you close the back cover.

incredible

Amazing work captivated me throughout the entire piece would recommend to anyone looking for a project to read.

The Poisonwood Bible

I read the entire book but it felt like it was written with an agenda in mind. I know others probably disagree and I am fine with that. I expected a great deal more than what I found.

Powerful and compelling!

Barbara Kingsolver is undoubtedly one of the most gifted contemporary novelists. She has the ability to draw her readers into her books in such a fashion that they will believe they are a part of them. The Poisonwood Bible is one of the most powerful books I have read in the last decade. It became an exotic journey for me to travel into an unknown land containing unknown beauty and horror. As in both of the books I have read by her, she draws upon her background in biology so that you will feel as if you are witnessing nature firsthand. The story is not for the faint of heart. It is heart-wrenching at points. Yet it is a story of the strength of the human spirit. As the author of a series of spiritual novels, [...], I especially appreciated this. Any book that can get a person in touch with one's heart and soul is so important in this often divisive and violent world in which we live. This book will definitely do it for you! I highly recommend it. Davis Aujourd'hui, author of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude"

One of the Few Finest American Novels

This is a superbly lyrical, multifaceted, psychologically and sociologically astute masterwork treating a white Christian missionary family's awkwardly tragic attempt to evangelize part of black Africa. Maybe part of my high appreciation for this novel derives from my wife's and my Christian missionary years as well as my later chairmanship of a large African languages department in the Washington DC area. Kingsolver's academic background in biology allows her to describe African flora and fauna with graceful power. Her descriptions of intercultural-understnding ineptitude, of political and economic upheavals, of rapidly shifting economic actions and reactions, are amazing. Here is just one example of her ability to reach depths of insight with quite simple words: "That's where I was cast ashore, on the riptide of my husband's ambition and the undertow of my children's needs." I think women find this book fascinating because the story is told, each chapter in the voice of one of the females: the mother, then one of her daughters, then another daughter, then another, and so on, each chapter carrying the vocabulary and language style of its author. Because of the variety of ages represented by the five females, five different viewpoints carry the story along. The preacher-husband, though a principal character, never writes or speaks -- he is only described by each of the five females. I find that I recommend this book more often than any other novel I've ever read.

Kingsolver is amazing!

I was already a big Kingsolver fan, and this one goes on my list of all-time favorite books. She constructs complex stories with lots of history lessons thrown in, then writes so beautifully I have to reread out loud many passages, paragraphs and ideas.