The Bestselling Prayer Book You Can Buy Is Free in the Language of One of the World’s Poorest Nations

“The Prayer: Rise with Jesus” is a #1 Amazon Best Seller in three languages and a winner of three international book awards. In Malawi, one of the poorest countries on earth, the same book costs nothing — printed in Chichewa and placed by hand into the hands of people who could never buy it.

In American bookstores and on Amazon, “The Prayer: Rise with Jesus” sits where bestsellers sit. It has topped Amazon charts in three languages, won three international book awards in a single year, and been covered by the press across seven countries. It is, by any commercial measure, a book people pay for.

In Malawi, it is a book people are simply given.

There, the same award-winning devotional is printed in Chichewa — the language spoken in the villages and towns of a nation the World Bank ranks among the poorest on earth — and carried in by hand. Not mailed to a warehouse. Not sold from a shelf. Placed, one copy at a time, into the hands of people for whom the price of an imported book is out of reach.

“The book earns its way in one part of the world so it can be free in another,” said co-author and publisher Alexander Debelov. “Somebody in New York buys a copy, and that copy quietly pays for another one to reach a village in Malawi — in their own language, for nothing. The bestseller funds the gift.”

Why translate a bestseller just to give it away

The decision runs against every instinct of publishing. A translated edition is an expense; a free one earns nothing. But for authors Stefania Leão and Alexander Debelov, that was the point.

“Prayer began as a silent conversation with God, in one of the hardest seasons of my life,” said Leão, who first wrote the book in Portuguese and never intended to publish it. “I never imagined it would be read by anyone — let alone translated into Chichewa and carried into villages in Malawi. The book saved me first. Now it’s meant to reach the people the world forgets.”

The Malawi edition is part of a larger promise: the authors keep none of the money. Every dollar “The Prayer” earns — every copy sold across six languages, every royalty from a record-breaking year — is directed to two missions on opposite ends of the earth. In Malawi, proceeds print the free Chichewa edition and help build churches. In the United States, the same royalties fund homeless outreach on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

A movement with the receipts to back it up

This is not a hopeful start-up with a slogan. “The Prayer: Rise with Jesus” arrives in Malawi as a genuine phenomenon:

• #1 Amazon Best Seller in three languages — Christian Prayer Books, Religion in Portuguese, and Religion in Italian;
• Three international book awards in a single year — the Best Indie Book Award, the Storytrade Award, and Readers’ Favorite;
• Published in six languages — English, Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, and Russian — plus a free Chichewa edition for Malawi;
• Editorial coverage across seven countries — including The Christian Post, Church Times of London, Vision Christian Media (Australia), Baptist News Global, UCB Asia Pacific, Revista Pernambuco (Brazil), Christian Tribune (Taiwan), and CVandaag (Netherlands).

See it for yourself

The full Malawi story — with photos and video of the Chichewa edition being read and delivered in person — is documented at readtheprayer.com/malawi. The authors are inviting readers, churches, and supporters to join what they describe as a simple exchange: every copy purchased anywhere in the world sends a free copy, in someone’s own language, to a reader who will never see a bookstore.

“A bestseller is a number,” Debelov said. “A free book in the hands of someone who could never afford one — that’s the whole reason we wrote it.”