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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.54 EAN: 9780060786502 ISBN: 0060786507 Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 576 Publication Date: May 31, 2005 Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Release Date: May 31, 2005 Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse? In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years. The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo. Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber Product Description: 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. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Promising, but NothingThis book might not have been bad. The idea of a missionary family (from the Jim Crow South, no less)moving to Africa had its merits. The idea of narrating from five different perspectives was original and might have been pulled off. Adah was a fairly interesting, if unrealistic and unsympathetic, character. Most of the prose was beautiful. But somehow, this just didn't work out. First of all, none of the characters were believable. The father was too heartless, the mother was too spineless, ... Read More Rating:  - An Eye OpenerCertainly a great book exposing how one culture whether miles apart or continents apart do not understand one another. I have a son who has an austism spectrum disorder, and although this book is not even close to anything to do with autism or any other kind of disability...this book somehow made me able to "see" how one set of people does not understand another and for no particular reason, other than they are different from one another in such a way that one cannot possibly comprehend. I'd say if ... Read More Rating: - A book for the Colonialists, not the colonised: for Westerners, not AfricansIt is easy, in the (politically) post colonial world of modern Africa to descend into limp wristed European angst. This book teeters on that edge. It is a book written for colonials and the colonialists. It has very little to say to those of us whose birthright is Africa, of whatever colour, creed, nationality (or tribe). It charts that moment in time when direct political subjugation was replaced by economic subjugation through local proxies. Alas, this is ... Read More Rating: - The Poisonwood bibleThis powerful novel by Barbara Kingsolver charts the lives of a missionary family and portrays the interplay of good intentions and motives warped by dogma. One ends up with an aching wonder ... what was changed, by whom and who or what prevailed! Rating: - A Gem of Postcolonial Literature"Jesus is Bangala!" declares Reverend Nathan Price to his ragtag congregation deep in the Congolese jungle. The exclamation is full of irony; in the villagers' native Kikongo, "bangala" means either "precious and dear" or "poisonwood tree," depending on the pronunciation. Rev. Price blithely uses the latter pronunciation, characteristically misunderstanding his would-be flock as he blunderingly tries to superimpose Christianity and American customs onto their culture. The consequences of Price's ignorance ... Read More 
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