The Poisonwood Bible

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.

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper
Published: 10/07/1998
Pages: 560
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.87lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.46w x 1.74d
ISBN: 9780060175405

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.6
Point Value: 29
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 35204 / Poisonwood Bible


Award: PEN/Faulkner Award - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/10/1998 pg. 366
Library Journal 09/01/1998 pg. 214
Kirkus Reviews 09/01/1998 pg. 1219
New York Times 10/18/1998 pg. 7
New York Times 12/06/1998 pg. 8
Publishers Weekly Best Books 01/01/1998 pg. 41
Best of Book Sense/First 5 Yrs 04/01/2004 pg. 1
Library Journal 07/01/1998
Foreword 01/01/2005 pg. 1
Entertainment Weekly 06/27/2008 pg. 107
People Weekly 11/09/2009 pg. 53
Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 103
Entertainment Weekly 08/22/2014 pg. 113

About the Author
Kingsolver, Barbara: -

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.