Books by Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver is an American author who has published fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She has won, among other things, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (2023), the Women’s Prize for Fiction twice (2010 and 2023), the National Humanities Medal (2000).
As the child of public health experts, Kingsolver spent time as a child living in Leopoldville—an experience that informed The Poisonwood Bible, a beloved modern classic that tells the story of an American missionary family moving to what was then the Belgian Congo. She trained as an ecologist and has been active in the climate movement; several of her books, including Flight Behaviour, deal with environmental themes.
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction
“This is a real blockbuster of a novel with stunning energy, enormous humor, wit and sheer narrative drive. It’s a retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, from the title onwards. In fact, it follows Dickens’s plot fairly closely but Kingsolver moves the action to poor, rural Virginia, to the lives of country dwellers who in American culture have always been dismissed as hillbillies. In a way, it’s a great celebration and reclamation of that so-called hillbilly identity.
But it’s more than that because as the young hero Damon (or Demon) grows up, he becomes embroiled in one of the greatest social crises of contemporary America, which is opioid addiction. It becomes an issue-driven book, but the great disaster of mass addiction in his rural community never overwhelms his voice. It never dampens the wit and the sheer exuberance of the storytelling. In the end, it’s a book about some very, very dark social processes, but at the same time it’s still absolutely uplifting, exhilarating and enjoyable.”
“It was criticised as being poverty porn, but I don’t really see that. It does risk being wildly sentimental, but I kind of like that. It’s old school. It has a confident, Dickensian snap and brio, a broad, swinging-for-the-fences ambition, and it worked for me. And the ending is the complete clichéd happy ending. Yet, because it’s such an enormous book, when you get there you feel like you’ve earned the big sentimental pay-off. I really liked it. It had me welling up.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction Set in the American South
Xan Brooks, Novelist
The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver
🏆 Winner of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction
Kingsolver's bestselling, prize-winning sixth novel—released in 2009—is a complex construction built of journals ostensibly kept by a man called Harrison Shepherd and curated by a friend, Violet, after his death. Having been removed to post-revolution Mexico by his mother ahead of the Second World War, he works for Frida Kahlo and Diego Garcia, as they welcome the exiled Leon Trotsky. He becomes a bestselling author and returns to an increasingly hysterical United States in the midst of the 'Red Scare'—and finds himself under intense pressure when he is tarred as a Communist. The Washington Post described it at the time of publication as "the most mature and ambitious" novel Kingsolver had ever written.
“One of the things that’s fascinating about Flight Behaviour is that at at least on the surface it offers a counter-example Ghosh’s argument social realism is not fit for purpose when it comes to climate change. After all, here is a novel that is absolutely depicting the social realities of a small community through a fine-grained attention to the detail of individual lives. The only remarkable thing is the arrival of a flock of butterflies whose migration has been disrupted by climate change, and even that might well have been plucked from the pages of a newspaper. And in an odd way it’s precisely this attention to social reality that makes the novel so effective, and so interesting. Because what Kingsolver lets us see is the way small disruptions to natural cycles alter the world, often without us even being fully aware of it, gradually deranging and unsettling individuals and communities.” Read more...
The Best Climate Change Novels
James Bradley, Novelist
“The Poisonwood Bible blew me away when I read it. Barbara Kingsolver is a magnificent writer. I’ve heard people say she’s a woman’s writer, as if it’s some lesser place in the world of writing. These are huge books that go right to the heart of the human condition. I’m so happy to see her get her Pulitzer…This is about a family of Southern Baptists. The father, Nathan, is an egomaniac who is determined to go on this mission, whether it’s wanted or not. He drags his family with him into the heart of the Congo, with this white savior delusion that he is going to save the souls of all these poor, ignorant black people who know nothing and can’t exist in the world. He’s a nightmare. I’ve seen men like this. All the point-of-view characters are female. It’s brilliant.” Read more...
Historical Fiction Set Around the World
Jane Johnson, Historical Novelist
Interviews where books by Barbara Kingsolver were recommended
Historical Fiction Set Around the World, recommended by Jane Johnson
From Africa to the Middle East to Korea and Japan, there are so many countries you can discover by reading a good historical novel. British novelist and publisher Jane Johnson, several of whose books take place in Morocco at different times in the country’s history, recommends five of her favourite historical novels set around the world.
The best books on Displacement, recommended by Michelle Jana Chan
A sense of displacement is at the heart of many of our greatest works of literature. Here Vanity Fair travel editor Michelle Jana Chan discusses five brilliant novels dealing with this theme that influenced her debut Song.
The best books on The Diplomat’s Wife, recommended by Brigid Keenan
The author discusses a varied selection of books about young women living abroad. Draws on her own experiences as a Diplomat’s Wife. Features Out of Africa and The Jewel In The Crown with three more travel classics
The Best Climate Change Novels, recommended by James Bradley
The best fiction allows us to hold ideas in our heads about time and space and causality and connection that are difficult to articulate in other ways, argues the Australian author James Bradley. It helps its readers engage with dangers and possibilities that are at the very edge of imagination
The Best Cli-Fi Books, recommended by Dan Bloom
Fiction that explores issues of climate change is growing at an unprecedented rate today, says the journalist who coined the phrase ‘cli-fi’, Dan Bloom. Here, he picks the five best books of the field, and introduces us to a globally important, underexplored literary genre
The Best Historical Fiction Set in the American South, recommended by Xan Brooks
The ‘Deep’ South is a complicated place with a complicated history. But that’s what makes it such an effective literary setting, says Xan Brooks—author of The Catchers, a story of Blues music and exploitation that unfolds in the Mississippi Delta. Here he recommends some of the best historical fiction set in the American South, including novels by Flannery O’Connor and Mark Twain.
Award-Winning Novels of 2023, recommended by Cal Flyn
The enormous variety of new, beautifully-blurbed books being published every month presents an agony of choice for the casual reader. Luckily, literary prize shortlists offer a shortcut to discovering some of the best novels of the year. Here, Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a helpful round-up of the award-winning novels of the 2023 season and a few notable runners-up. Read more fiction recommendations on Five Books
The Best Political Novels of 2023, recommended by Boyd Tonkin
The Orwell Prizes are the UK’s most prestigious prizes for writing about politics, awarded annually to books and articles that best meet George Orwell’s own ambition “to make political writing into an art.” Boyd Tonkin, chair of this year’s judges, talks us through the books shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
Crime Fiction and Social Justice, recommended by Karin Slaughter
Many of us enjoy thrillers because of the pacy story, but good crime fiction has always been about society, says American novelist Karin Slaughter. She recommends five crime novels that are not only great reads but “pry the scab off the human condition.”
The 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist, recommended by Cal Flyn
Every year, the Women’s Prize for Fiction highlights the best novels written by women over the previous twelve months. In 2023, the six-strong Women’s Prize shortlist features the latest books by beloved bestsellers Barbara Kingsolver and Maggie O’Farrell, plus a debut novel set during the siege of Sarajevo and a book told primarily from the point of view of a dolphin.
