#83 in Historical fiction
The Poisonwood Bible
- 576
- Pages
- about 11 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 0 weeks on the list
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Our view
“The Poisonwood Bible” is a demanding, rewarding novel that leaves readers thinking rather than comforted. A missionary family’s move from Georgia to a Congolese village in 1959 is told through several voices that readers may find hard to like and, for that very reason, believable. The shifting narrators and wordy prose put some readers off, and others feel the story runs on well past its natural end. Give it time and attention.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Poisonwood Bible is a 1998 novel by Barbara Kingsolver, which tells the story of a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 550 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 79% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Historical fiction average of 8.0. That is how 8.1 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 31 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 519 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Poisonwood Bible?
It has 576 pages — longer than 74% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Historical fiction — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
