Poisonwood Bible : A Novel

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 itfrom garden seeds to Scriptureis calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one familys tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.