Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler

Jul 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

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 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.

Ratings and reviews

Wonderful read! Wish I discovered her earlier.

I discovered this book while on a lunch break from work. I'd never heard of the author and just wanted to glance at it. But then I couldn't put the book down and hadn't bought it yet! Octavia then became my favorite author. I devoured this book and every book she has written, purchased them many times over when lost. This book has made me think of humanity in a different light, and every time I read it, I feel that I grow as a person more aware of what others are capable of becoming. Bought from google store last night and finished reading it an hour ago. I'm ready to read it again!

Octavia Butler has been my favorite author since l first read Kindred in the early '80's; l have since read/reread everything of hers l could find, and grieved her passing like l knew her. Parable of the Sower - and its 2nd volume, Parable of the Talents - highlights not only her extraordinary storytelling ability, but also her visionary awareness and understanding of the power dynamics in human relationships, and the likelihood of how they could play out.

About the author

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a bestselling and award-winning author, considered one of the best science fiction writers of her generation. She received both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and in 1995 became the first author of science fiction to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She was also awarded the prestigious PEN Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), was praised both for its imaginative vision and for Butler’s powerful prose, and spawned four prequels, beginning with Mind of My Mind (1977) and finishing with Clay’s Ark (1984). Although the Patternist series established Butler among the science fiction elite, it was Kindred (1979), a story of a black woman who travels back in time to the antebellum South, that brought her mainstream success. In 1985, Butler won Nebula and Hugo awards for the novella “Bloodchild,” and in 1987 she published Dawn, the first novel of the Xenogenesis trilogy, about a race of aliens who visit earth to save humanity from itself. Fledgling (2005) was Butler’s final novel. She died at her home in 2006.