Literary places in Kikwit

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

An American missionary family lands in the Belgian Congo in 1959 and settles by the Kwilu River in the Bandundu backcountry, near the real river town of Kikwit. Over the next years the story follows the country out of colonial rule and into the turmoil of independence, from the fictional village of Kilanga to Leopoldville, then downriver to Bulungu. The map holds the Kwilu heartland; the family's later drift into Angola and back to Georgia falls outside it.

6 places →