The Poisonwood Bible
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50 free The Poisonwood Bible trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Poisonwood Bible follows the Price family of Georgia, a Baptist preacher, his wife and their four daughters, who fly into the Belgian Congo in 1959 for what is meant to be a single year. The story is told in turns by the five women, and it runs from the family's first night in the village of Kilanga to the decades that follow, as the Congo wins and then loses its independence around them. This quiz covers every part of the novel. There are questions on Book 1, Genesis, with its garden, its river and its first sermons; on Book 2, The Revelation, and Book 3, The Judges, which bring the politics of 1960 and the family's hardest months; on Book 4, Bel and the Serpent, and the loss that breaks the family apart; and on Book 5, Exodus, which follows each surviving sister into adult life. A few questions step outside the story to its author and its reception. It is written for students revising for a reading quiz on one book of the novel, for book clubs, and for anyone who has just turned the last page. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can check a detail or settle an argument as you go.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price means bängala to call Jesus what, though his accent turns it into a toxic tree?
Most precious
Most precious is what Nathan intends, but said his hurried way the Kikongo word names the poisonwood tree, so every sermon ends by likening Jesus to a plant the villagers know to avoid.
Q 02In The Poisonwood Bible, which snake, left in the chicken house as a curse, kills young Ruth May Price?
A green mamba
A green mamba bites her as the sisters check the coop at dawn, and Leah later mourns her every January 17, the day Patrice Lumumba was also killed.
Q 03In The Poisonwood Bible, which parrot, left behind by the previous missionary, shocks the Prices with its swearing?
Methuselah
Methuselah is thrown out of his cage by Nathan but lingers near the house, and is killed on the very day the Congo becomes independent.
Q 04In The Poisonwood Bible, what keeps Kilanga's villagers from letting Nathan Price baptize their children in the river?
Crocodiles
Crocodiles had killed a village girl in that river the year before, so to her neighbors Nathan's pleas sound like a plan to feed their children to the animals.
Q 05In The Poisonwood Bible, what overruns Kilanga one night, forcing the whole village to flee to boats on the river?
A column of ants
A column of ants eats everything in its path, and in the panic Orleanna carries Ruth May to safety and leaves Adah behind, a choice that haunts them both for decades.
Q 06In The Poisonwood Bible, how do the Prices fend off chief Tata Ndu's wish to take Rachel as a wife?
Faking an engagement
Faking an engagement to the pilot Eeben Axelroot spares the chief's pride, though the pretend courtship slowly turns into a real one.
Q 07In The Poisonwood Bible, what is the one thing Rachel Price grabs as her family flees the house one night?
Her mirror
Her mirror breaks at the riverbank when another family pushes her out of their boat. She gets through the crowd with a trick from a survival book: elbows out, feet up.
Q 08Which American novelist, who lived in the Congo for a time as a child, wrote The Poisonwood Bible?
Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver was seven when her father, a physician, took the family to the Congo for a spell, though the novel itself is not autobiographical.
Q 09In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price use to catch fish for Kilanga, killing far more than anyone can eat?
Dynamite
Dynamite thrown into the river yields a feast, but with no way to keep fish cold in the heat, most of the catch rots on the banks.
Q 10In The Poisonwood Bible, how does chief Tata Ndu have Kilanga decide whether to accept Jesus as its god?
A public vote
A public vote is called in the middle of Nathan's own church service, with pebbles dropped into bowls, and Jesus loses by a wide margin.
Q 11In The Poisonwood Bible, how do the Prices get around the airline's baggage limit on their flight to the Congo?
Wearing extra layers
Wearing extra layers, with household goods hidden underneath, gets each of them past a limit of 44 pounds, a trick suggested by their own mission league.
Q 12In The Poisonwood Bible, the Price family leaves which Georgia town to spend a year as missionaries in the Congo?
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is where the twins were placed in a class for gifted children, to the unease of neighbors who saw only Adah's disability.
Q 13In The Poisonwood Bible, which housekeeper warns Nathan Price to plant his garden in mounds, and later quits?
Mama Tataba
Q 21In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Ruth May break when she falls out of a tree while spying on drilling boys?
Her arm
Her arm is set in a cast by a Belgian doctor in Stanleyville, who spends the visit arguing with Nathan about what foreign rule has done to the Congo.
Q 22In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Ruth May spot on Eeben Axelroot's plane and get scared into keeping secret?
A sack of diamonds
A sack of diamonds is the first hint that the pilot is a smuggler, and he warns the child that her mother will sicken and die if she tells anyone.
Q 23In The Poisonwood Bible, what is the day job of Anatole Ngemba, who translates Nathan Price's sermons for Kilanga?
Schoolteacher
Mama Tataba reshapes his flat beds into mounds overnight and he flattens them again, only to adopt her method after the first downpour washes his seeds away.
Q 14In The Poisonwood Bible, why do Nathan Price's Georgia vegetables grow lush in Kilanga yet never bear any fruit?
Nothing pollinates them
Nothing pollinates them, as Nathan works out after days of puzzling, and when Leah jokes that they should have packed bees he answers her in earnest.
Q 15In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price denounce at the feast Kilanga throws to welcome his family?
Their nakedness
Their nakedness draws a thundering sermon that compares the village to Sodom, and the hosts who had killed a goat in his honor drift away.
Q 16In The Poisonwood Bible, which brand of cake mix does Orleanna carry to the Congo for her daughters' birthdays?
Betty Crocker
Betty Crocker mixes are ruined by the jungle humidity before Rachel's birthday, and Orleanna's swearing over them is what the family parrot learns to repeat.
Q 17In The Poisonwood Bible, what punishment does Nathan Price hand his daughters when the family parrot learns to curse?
Copying 100 verses
Copying 100 verses is his standard penalty, known in the family as The Verse, and each passage is chosen so that its last line names the sin he wants confessed.
Q 18In The Poisonwood Bible, which condition has Adah Price had from birth, leaving her to trail far behind her twin?
Hemiplegia
Hemiplegia leaves one side of her body weaker than the other, and Adah blames her twin, saying Leah grew strong in the womb at her expense.
Q 19In The Poisonwood Bible, which kind of wordplay fills the narration of the near-silent twin Adah Price?
Palindromes
Palindromes are her private language: she likes her own name spelled Ada, and she rereads finished books from back to front to find a second story in them.
Q 20In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Nathan Price wake up with after ignoring a warning about a tree in his garden?
A painful rash
A painful rash covers him after he handles the poisonwood his housekeeper pointed out, an early sign of how little notice he takes of local knowledge.
Schoolteacher Anatole is an orphan who worked in the mines as a boy, and Adah suspects his translations of the sermons say whatever he likes.
Q 24In The Poisonwood Bible, which animal does chief Tata Ndu announce has eaten Adah Price on her walk home?
A lion
A lion had in fact killed a bushbuck beside her footprints, and her survival fills Nathan's church with villagers impressed by the protection his god seems to offer.
Q 25In The Poisonwood Bible, which American playground game does the youngest Price daughter teach Kilanga's children?
Mother May I
Mother May I makes her the first of the family to win friends in the village, though the children tire of her bossing and drift away.
Q 26In The Poisonwood Bible, in which city, now called Kinshasa, do Nathan and Leah watch the Congo become independent?
Leopoldville
Leopoldville is where they hear Patrice Lumumba speak on June 30, 1960, and where the Underdowns serve them a lavish last meal before leaving the country.
Q 27In The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price is haunted by missing which wartime ordeal that killed the rest of his company?
The Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March took his whole unit after he had been wounded and evacuated, and he came home convinced that God was watching him for signs of cowardice.
Q 28In The Poisonwood Bible, what does Orleanna find stuck to the wall behind her sick youngest daughter's bed?
Her quinine pills
Her quinine pills had been spat out and hidden for more than a year because of their bitter taste, which explains the fever that nearly kills her.
Q 29Which talk show host boosted sales of The Poisonwood Bible by picking it for her television book club?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey made an established writer a household name: the novel sold more hardcover copies than all of its author's earlier books put together.
Q 30In The Poisonwood Bible, what gift from Anatole does Leah master so well that Kilanga starts to call her unwomanly?
A bow and arrow
A bow and arrow, with lessons from Nelson, turn her into a fine shot, and her demand to join the men's hunt splits the whole village.