Key themes
- Colonialism as something Nathan Price embodies without understanding
- The daughters as five different women produced by the same impossible childhood
- The Congo as the subject — not the background — of the novel
About this book
Nathan Price, a Baptist minister consumed by guilt and religious fervour, moves his wife and four daughters from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in 1959 — and brings his certainties into a world that will destroy them. Told through the voices of the four daughters and their mother, Kingsolver's novel is about colonialism, religion and what it costs those who are forced to follow someone else's mission.
Published in 1998, The Poisonwood Bible was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has sold millions of copies. Kingsolver spent several years in Africa as a child — her father was a public health physician in what is now the DRC.
Discussion questions
- The novel has five female narrators, each with a distinct voice. How does Kingsolver develop these voices — and what does the multiplicity say about a story that Nathan, the patriarch, could never tell honestly?
- Nathan Price's religious certainty is the novel's critique of colonialism. How does Kingsolver develop him — and does she give him any sympathy alongside the damage he does?
- The Congo's history — the rubber terror, Belgian colonialism, the CIA's involvement in Lumumba's assassination — is woven into the personal story. How does Kingsolver manage this integration?
- Adah Price's relationship to her own disability and to language is one of the novel's most intellectually rich threads. How does Kingsolver develop her?
- The Poisonwood Bible is widely assigned in US schools as an introduction to colonialism and postcolonial literature. What specifically does fiction give the subject that history cannot?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
Reading it with your group?
Get The Poisonwood Bible
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.