Reading Order
The Poisonwood Bible Reading Order
Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is a sweeping multigenerational novel told through the voices of the five women of the Price family — a Baptist missionary, his wife, and their four daughters — who travel from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959 and are transformed, broken, and reborn by Africa and by history over the following three decades.
Where to start
The Poisonwood Bible
Complete The Poisonwood Bible Book List
- 1Buy
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver·1998·The complete standalone novel. The starting point for Kingsolver. Start here. - Buy
Prodigal Summer
OptionalBarbara Kingsolver·2000·Kingsolver's novel of interwoven ecological storylines set in Appalachian Virginia — a good follow-up for readers drawn to her writing's landscape and natural world dimensions.
The Poisonwood Bible — Frequently Asked Questions
How is The Poisonwood Bible structured?
The Poisonwood Bible is narrated by five women — Orleanna Price, the wife and mother, who speaks in retrospective sections at the beginning of each of the novel's seven 'books,' and her four daughters: Rachel (the eldest, vain and practical, who eventually marries into the expatriate world of postcolonial Africa), Leah (idealistic and earnest, who falls in love with a Congolese man), Adah (Leah's twin, who was born with hemiplegia and who barely speaks, but whose narration is the novel's most literary and linguistically inventive — she reads and writes words forward and backward simultaneously), and Ruth May (the youngest, a child). Each daughter's voice is tonally distinct and represents a different response to displacement, faith, and the experience of Africa. The father, Nathan Price — a traumatized veteran of the Bataan Death March whose religious obsession has curdled into fanaticism — is never given a direct voice; he is seen only through the women around him.
What is the Poisonwood Bible's relationship to Congolese history?
The novel is set against the actual historical backdrop of Congolese independence: the Belgian Congo became the Republic of the Congo on June 30, 1960, under the elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba; Lumumba was overthrown and murdered in January 1961 in a coup widely understood to have been supported by the Belgian government and the CIA, fearing Lumumba's socialist alignment; the subsequent period of instability culminated in the rise of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled the country (renamed Zaire in 1971) as a corrupt dictatorship until 1997. Kingsolver uses the Price family as a vehicle for examining American and European attitudes toward Africa — the missionary paternalism of Nathan Price as a microcosm of colonial and neo-colonial intervention — and the novel's historical canvas allows it to explore how individuals are shaped by, complicit in, or destroyed by historical forces much larger than themselves.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.