A New York Times Notable Book: In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future. “A stunner.” —Flea, musician and actor, TheWall Street Journal Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a … defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.
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I now understand why Octavia Butler is such a renowned sci-fi author. This book was bleak and weird and gripping and unexpectedly lyrical. I’ve already started devouring its sequel. Just read it!
Butler’s careful crafting of this fine piece of literary art is absolutely brilliant! Her exploration of thematic issues such as illiteracy, community, hyperempathy, trust, change and religion, assist in making the novel relatable. Her use of various literary techniques and devices such as the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter and …
The future envisaged by this book is one that seems to be steadily coming to pass, and Butler’s work here seems more prescient than in any of her other more high-fantasy works. It’s written in a much more immediate voice, and one feels intensely drawn in to the world of the protagonist, a teenage world trying to envisage a future for a decaying …
Disturbing and thought provoking! Superb story about the breakdown of society, government and the economy. Lauren is an empath and leaves her home place, leading a small group of people for whom she is a prophet promising a new beginning and a new faith. Absolutely brilliant! I am now ready to begin the sequel!
Phenomenal. You can’t get the characters out of your mind even after you’ve read and completed the story. Everything feels so real. From the characters to the settings to the emotion. Everything that Lauren endures, you endure along with her. This book is marvelous and haunting. The story will stay with you, probably for good.
If you like dystopian fiction, I highly recommend this book. America is in chaos, and the reasons of climate change and an expanding wealth gap are dropped in here and there.
Lauren Olamina makes for an intriguing main character. She grows up in the relative safety of a walled community in a suburb of Los Angeles. Her father is a Baptist …
I expect to reread all of her books in a few years and catch subtleties I missed because I was reading at top speed just to see what would happen to the characters!
I churned through this in a matter of days. It is compelling reading. I found myself rereading the main character’s Earthseed philosophy inserts at the start of the chapters several times, almost like a deep breath before reading on.
It’s not a pleasant book to read, but I couldn’t put it down.
Dystopian? Yes. Far-fetched? Sadly, not so much.
Good writing, a bit preachy.
In “Parable of the Sower,” Octavia Butler presents a society in violent disrepair where a teenaged daughter of a preacher envisions a peaceful civilization and redefined religion, if only she can survive to share her dream! As with all of Octavia Butler’s stories, the language is lush, the characters easily and realistically portrayed, and the …
Very much enjoyed. Thought provoking in places. Well written.
Octavia Butler was way ahead of her time. She was more than a science fiction writer, she was a prophet of sorts. This book is much like a blueprint for readers who want to figure out how we politically, socially, and environmentally got to the place where we are in our society. Every time I read this book and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, I am reminded …
Don’t know why I haven’t read this author until now. Eerily prescient to today’s world. More an alternate reality about the unknown strengths we all have. Viewing the start of a new way to look at God and what is expected of us and him.
Such a timely read
Tedious and pretentious.
I liked this book, although the time setting, in 2027, was too close to the present to allow me to suspend my sense of disbelief. If the author had set the book in 2037 or 20 47, I would have been more comfortable reading it. The author simply projected too much change, too soon. Other than that, it was an engaging story, well written and well …
This is one of those novels that will really make you examine the world around you; the best kind that makes you look up and see maybe what you hadn’t seen before. It’s a gripping, compelling account from a young woman named Lauren, living in a world not very far removed from our own.
Since almost everything that happens in the book is a …
Set in the not too distant future (2025-27), this post-apocalyptic story set in Southern California hit really close to home. I was expecting spaceships and other worlds, so this was unexpected, but in a good way! Great characters and great storytelling by Octavia Butler.
When I read this series years ago, I couldn’t predict how much it would come to reflect our lives in 2020. So many of her predictions seem more frightening and possible, even in my hometown. Ultimately, the human spirit prevails. And a young woman leads the way.
Parable of the Sower is set in a near-future dystopian America that is collapsing from climate change, corruption, and government policies that support wage slavery. Law and order has broken down and many people turn to theft, murder, and cannibalism. Lauren Olamina is an African-American teenager who lives in a walled enclave outside Los Angeles. …