The Poisonwood Bible, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver

Acclaimed to be "a powerful new epic" and the author "a gifted magician of words." - Beautifully written." - "Tragic and remarkable" - "Compelling, lyrical and utterly believable - "Abravura performance" - "A novel that brims with excitement and rings with authority."


The story is told by the wife and daughters of Nathan Price, an evangelical Baptist who takes his family on a missionary tour to the Belgian Congo in 1959. Dealing with the natives in an over-strict and uncaring manner, Nathan alienates those he came to convert, and by his severity ends up with a wholesale rebellion on his hands, both on the part of his family and those he came to serve. Worsened by a severe drought, an invasion of ants and other natural disasters, the situation finally becomes unbearable, and the mission totally disintegrates.


This ambitious novel is set against the Congo's struggle for independence from Belgium, one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the 20th Century. It is the story of a family's tragic undoing and remarkable recovery in the course of three decades in post-colonial Africa. The novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most daring of writers.