(Oprah Book Club Selection) This 1998 novel by National Humanities Medal winner Barbara Kingsolver won South Africa's Boeke Prize. Told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, The Poisonwood Bible chronicles how the fierce Baptist evangelist took 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 a country throwing off its colonial yoke. This edition includes a profile of Kingsolver and her own commentary on what she called her "Damned Africa Book."
"There are few ambitious, successful and beautiful novels. Lucky for us, we have one now, in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.... This awed reviewer hardly knows where to begin."—Washington Post Book World
