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Cover of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler

Book 1 of Earthseed

  • 320 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 1993
  • 23 editions
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1 About this book

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

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 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.

  • Science fiction
  • Dystopian fiction
  • Comics & graphic novels, science fiction
  • Survival
  • Environmental disasters
  • Comics & graphic novels
  • Twenty-first century
  • African American women

2 What to expect

A near-future novel told as the journal of a teenage girl in a collapsing California, where climate change, poverty and violence have broken society down. Forced from her walled neighborhood, she walks north with other refugees and shapes a new belief system, Earthseed, built on the idea that God is change. It is grim and violent, with cruelty shown plainly, and also determined and practical in its hope. A sequel, Parable of the Talents, continues the story.

Good for readers who want: dystopian fiction, a determined young heroine, and hard-won hope.

3 About Octavia E. Butler

1947–2006

Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction and speculative fiction author who won Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Born in Pasadena, California, Butler was raised by her widowed mother. She was extremely shy as a child, but Butler found an outlet at the library reading fantasy, and in writing.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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