The Poisonwood Bible

Author’s Note

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. Its principal characters are pure inventions with no relations on this earth, as far as I know. But the Congo in which I placed them is genuine. The historical figures and events described here are as real as I could render them with the help of recorded history, in all its fascinating variations.

Because I wasn’t able to enter Zaire while researching and writing the novel, I relied on memory, travel in other parts of Africa, and many people’s accounts of the natural, cultural, and social history of the Congo/Zaire. Such is the diversity and value of these sources- to me, and to any reader who might wish to know more of the facts underpinning the fiction-that I’ve cited many of them in a bibliography at the end of the book. Most profoundly helpful among them was Jonathan Kwitny’s description of Zaire’s postcolonial history, in his excellent book, Endless Enemies, which gave shape to my passion to write a novel on the same subject. I returned continually to that account for the big picture and countless small insights. I gleaned many kinds of instruction from Janheinz Jahn’s classic text, Muntu; Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart; Man P. Merriam’s Congo: Background of Conflict; and Lumumba: The Last Fifty Days by G. Heinz and H. Donnay. I couldn’t have written the book at all without two remarkable sources of literary inspiration, approximately equal in size: K. E. Laman’s Dictionnaire Kikongo-Francais, and the King James Bible.

I also relied on help from my lively community of friends, some of whom may have feared they’d breathe their last before I was through putting new versions of a mountainous manuscript in front of them. Steven Hopp, Emma Hardesty, Frances Goldin, Terry Karten, Sydelle Kramer, and Lillian Lent read and commented invaluably on many drafts. Emma Hardesty worked miracles of collegial tact, friendship, and efficiency that allowed me to spend my days as a writer. Anne Mairs and Eric Peterson helped sort out details of Kikongo grammar and Congolese life. Jim Malusa and Sonya Norman provided insights for the final draft. Kate Turkington cheered me on from South Africa. Mumia Abu-Jamal read and commented on the manuscript from prison; I’m grateful for his intelligence and courage.

I thank Virginia and Wendell Kingsolver, especially, for being different in every way from the parents I created for the narrators of this tale. I was the fortunate child of medical and public-health “workers, whose compassion and curiosity led them to the Congo. They brought me to a place of wonders, taught me to pay attention, and set me early on a path of exploring the great, shifting terrain between righteousness and what’s right.

I spent nearly thirty years waiting for the wisdom and maturity to write this book. That I’ve now written it is proof of neither of those things, but of the endless encouragement, unconditional faith, insomnolent conversation, and piles of arcane reference books delivered always just in the nick of time by my extraordinary husband. Thanks, Steven, for teaching me it’s no use waiting for things that only appear at a distance, and for believing a spirit of adventure will usually suffice.