Nathan Price, a Baptist minister, leaves civilized America, going on a missionary mission to the Belgian Congo, bringing with him his family, who carries with them everything they think they will need, but the African land surprises them, turning everything they brought into something worthless, and even their very existence will be full of challenges. Especially with the political events that are ravaging the country that is struggling to gain its independence, and the major powers are interfering in it, assassinating Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected prime minister.
The novel is alternately narrated by the mother, who loses something irreplaceable there, and her four daughters, each of whom narrates what is happening in her own way, trying to find her own separate path to salvation.
“The Poison Tree Gospel” is an intense journey in the vibrant African land, and a deep exploration of the other, written with a smooth narrative in which Barbara Kingsolver worked to transform the thorny threads of religion, politics, and race into a piece of literature of breathtaking beauty.
This novel was nominated for several literary awards, was translated into more than thirty languages, and sold more than four million copies around the world.
As soon as Pavel, at the head of a geological expedition, arrives at “Devil’s Hill,” the old shepherd living there warns him that he must leave the hill within a month, before he ends up committing suicide on the branch of an oak tree, and the fate of his mission becomes the same as the fate of the previous eight missions. However, the enthusiastic young man insists on making the mission a success, even though the members of his mission are fleeing down the hill one after the other.
Little by little, the two get closer: the young man who studied in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and the old man who knows the hill’s hidden secrets, and their evenings become endless darkness, during which “Pavel” tells the shepherd about his love affairs, while the latter listens in amazement, and his heart burns with love for the nun Maria, the last of the young man’s lovers. .
In “The Women of Warsaw,” Georgi Markov writes about two different worlds that border on contradiction, leaving the oak tree to chart the path to the end...