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Parable of the Sower (Parable, 1) Paperback – April 30, 2019
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When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGrand Central Publishing
- Publication dateApril 30, 2019
- Dimensions5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101538732181
- ISBN-13978-1538732182
- Lexile measure710L
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Octavia E. Butler, the “grand dame of science fiction,” was the author of several award-winning novels including The Parable of the Sower.
Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and numerous literary awards, she has been acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.
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Editorial Reviews
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"Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life-saving. She had found a form of resistance. Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood...used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution."―Brit Marling, New York Times
"In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched."―New Yorker
"Unnervingly prescient and wise. A worthy read for those intent on building a better world as this pandemic continues to lay bare how untenable, how depravedly unequal, the American way of life is and has always been."―Yaa Gyasi, New York Times
"If we're talking must-read authors like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, the one-and-only Octavia Butler needs be a part of the conversation. The groundbreaking sci-fi and speculative fiction author was a master of spinning imaginative tales that introduced you to both the possibilities -- and dangers -- of the human race, all while offering lessons on tribalism, race, gender, and sexuality."―O, The Oprah Magazine
"Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is a stunner. It's a terrifying vision of a dismal future brought on by the willful ignorance, racism and greed of human beings, and an eerily dangerous parallel to our present path. Ms. Butler gives us a satisfying protagonist in the hypersensitive teenager Lauren, whose courage and wits are an infinite source of inspiration."―Flea, Wall Street Journal
"A gripping tale of survival and a poignant account of growing up sane in a disintegrating world."―New York Times Book Review
"One of the most important and groundbreaking science-fiction authors."―Entertainment Weekly
"A powerful story of hope and faith."―Denver Post
"There isn't a page in this vivid and frightening story that fails to grip the reader."―San Jose Mercury News
"Artfully conceived and elegantly written . . . Butler's success in making Lauren's subsequent odyssey feel real is only the most obvious measure of this fine novel's worth."―Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A real gut-wrencher . . . What makes Butler's fiction compelling is that it is as crisply detailed as journalism. . . Often the smallest details are the most revelatory."―Washington Post
"A prophetic odyssey."―Essence
"Butler tells her story with unusual warmth, sensitivity, honesty, and grace; though science fiction readers will recognize this future Earth, Lauren Olamina and her vision make this novel stand out like a tree among saplings."―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"One of science fiction's most important figures, an author who wrote cracking, crackling, accessible and fast-moving adventure stories shot through with trenchant and smart allegories about race, gender and power . . . Parable of the Sower has never been more relevant."―Boing Boing
"One of Butler's most visceral, accomplished works . . . this is the stuff of the best dystopian science fiction: a real-life warning made fictional. Even in 1993, Butler understood climate change could well be the spark that ignites the dry kindling of race, class, and religious strife into a conflagration that will consume our nation. If anything, those issues are even more pressing a quarter-century later . . . Butler's vision of hard-won hope in challenging times is more essential now than ever before, and well worth seeking out in this new edition."―B&NBlog
"Butler [had a] practically psychic ability to predict the future."―New York Magazine, "The Best Books for Budding Black Feminists, According to Experts"
"A dystopian classic."―Kirkus Reviews
"One of the cornerstone works in the genre of Afrofuturism and the broader science fiction genre. The novel is set in a world a mere ten years in the future where water is as precious as oil, communities are ravaged by substance abuse, and a political leader will gain power under a 'Make America Great' slogan."―Buzzfeed
"The Earthseed books are instructional in a way that other apocalypse fictions are not . . . they offer something beyond practical preparations: a blueprint for adjusting to uncertainty."―Slate
"Serves as a timely reminder for us to take action."―Salon.com
"Prescient . . . [Octavia Butler's] work was notable for engaging with issues such as race, gender, sexuality, power and the environment . . . Butler's stories always involve a deeper exploration of societal issues."―LA Times
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition (April 30, 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1538732181
- ISBN-13 : 978-1538732182
- Lexile measure : 710L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)
- #34 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
- #249 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER (1947–2006) was the renowned author of numerous ground-breaking novels, including Kindred, Wild Seed, and Parable of the Sower. Recipient of the Locus, Hugo and Nebula awards, and a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work, in 1995 she became the first science- fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship ‘Genius Grant’. A pioneer of her genre, Octavia’s dystopian novels explore myriad themes of Black injustice, women’s rights, global warming and political disparity, and her work is taught in over two hundred colleges and universities nationwide.
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The story that Octavia Butler tells is a compelling story of survival and community. The opening of the book starts en medias res, exactly as a good futuristic novel can. I personally feel that telling too much of a back-story can destroy the reader’s ability to concoct one itself, it also takes away from the author’s ability to create suspense and mystery in the novel itself. Butler does a very good job of giving us a gripping story without boring us with the details of the failing of the society that once existed. It is very easy to take on the mindset of a young girl while reading, and that makes digesting all of the new and sometimes confusing information much more easily. The novel then goes on to talk about the sense of community that is felt in the walled “neighborhood” that Lauren, the main character and narrator, lives in. This neighborhood seems to be a well-oiled machine, despite the immediately apparent racial tensions to be found inside of the community. There is a division among the white members of the community and the other racial groups. This makes a lot of sense considering the racial tensions that exist even in the world today, but it was interesting to see that Butler does not envision a post-racial world for our future.
One of the bigger themes of this book is “new slavery”; I put this in quotes only because I believe it to be a coined term and not merely an expression that I have made up. “New slavery” was introduced around the same time, as prisons became an industry rather than a place of reform. Butler speaks of this issue in a speech she gave which is the secondary reading for this week, “Every now and then you hear– and I’m not talking about ante-bellum slavery but modern-day slavery–every now and then you hear about some group of homeless people or illegal aliens or other people who have been held in slavery and I sort of combined slavery and throw-away workers and prison problems because in Parable of the Sower there is slavery and it is entirely legal because it isn’t called “slavery.” This quote speaks to her inclusion of the “new slavery” in her novel. This kind of slavery is found encapsulated in the city of Olivar, the fictional city being built where “skilled” workers are needed. The characters in the novel fear that this city is merely an excuse to capture people and indenture them to the larger corporate structure. This is a frightening reality because it is not unrealistic. There are certainly places in this dystopian America where slaves are found. They are people who do not have money and then work for company credit, but they never make quite enough money to afford their living expenses, so they become indebted to the company they work for, and end up owing the company massive amounts of money, and passing that on to their children when they die, creating a system of debt slavery that persists indefinitely.
Butler definitely set out to make this a main feature in her book, but what is interesting is that the people of color in the novel feel that the city of Olivar would only want white workers. This is interesting because for as taught as the racial tensions are in the future, there does not seem to be hope for anyone who did not already have money when the country collapsed. Some people are simply “slightly better off”.
The effects of this “new slavery” can be found in the people that the characters meet later on in the story; some of the people who they run into like Emery and Tori. They are both escaped slaves who are now dealing with the consequences of living a slave’s existence. They are also both hyper-empathetic, just like our narrator. This means that not only can they see someone in pain and relate, but also they actually feel it, and it is considered to be debilitating. Our narrator does not like to share with people that she has this condition, but she notices that the newer members of the group share her condition and immediately bonds with them over it. This hyper-empathy is a big reason why Lauren makes such an interesting character, because it shows how painful killing is for her, and how everything she does has a reason, and also is in part why she founds her religion, Earthseed.
Religion is an interesting topic in any book, especially so in this one, as our character has spread the seeds for her own religion to take root, Earthseed. Earthseed is a new religion that has some elements of a bunch of already existing belief systems worked into it. The basic idea of Earthseed is that “the destiny of mankind is to take root amongst the stars,” this is interesting because it is both a spiritual philosophy, and a very real belief of the narrator. Lauren believes that the discontinuation of the space program is foolish, and that they should abandon the Earth and that they should try again somewhere else.
Earthseed fascinates me, and I think I know where it stems from. Lauren lives in a firmly Baptist community, but does not have the faith of her father. Earthseed is a comfort to Lauren, and it is that simple. It is a basic philosophy that has sprung out of her discomfort with the world around her. She is living in a virtual hell, and has had to come up with some way to make her own truth. The truth she chooses to believe rather than a truth that is told to her. This is exactly where all religion stems from. People as a whole would not believe in something and it was not comforting to them. This is why I think the theme of religion is so interesting a Cli-fi book. With or without realizing it, Octavia Butler has created a wonderful comparison between a religion founded by an 18 year old, and hundreds of thousands of scientists’ conclusive evidence that climate change is very, very real. In the secondary reading Butler quotes a cartoon, the interesting part was this, “Make up your own truth and stick to it, no matter how little sense it makes. And sooner or later, you’ll have converts. Trust me.” This rings the truth to me about the world in general. People are so much more likely to believe in and idealize something that comforts them, rather than something that tells them they need to change. This is the whole fundamental issue we have had with the class. Our big question, “what can we do?” is answered by this simple quote. We need to make up a truth that people want to believe in, we cannot keep throwing the discomforting truth in their faces or they will continue to believe their own truths, namely “there is nothing that I can do.” Octavia Butler draws a comparison between a people who are still in disbelief about how broken their world is, and their deep belief that things will return to what they once were. This is a constant theme throughout the beginning of the book. Instead, a new religion is formed, which has the potential to have hundreds of followers, all because it is comforting and simple. This struck me as genius, and I may be reading a little too deeply, but I gleamed from Butler’s speech that this may have been on purpose. I liked that in particular about this book.
The Parable of the Sower has struck me in a way that a lot of books have not. I do not however think that this book will make waves in the ocean of denial surrounding climate change. I don’t think that the book deals closely enough with what we, as a species, have done to destroy the planet, and therefore keeps us from feeling particularly guilty. This book is rather a story about survival, friendship, and faith. I liked it immensely and would even consider adding it to my course syllabus when I am finally a teacher rather than a student.
As I said, the book was exciting, but the climax was rather disappointing. The peak of the book was in the center of the story, and it eventually took a dip down. I also disliked how many characters were involved in the story. Some of them don’t add much to the book either, it was a pain trying to remember who was who and trying to keep up with the constant introductions. I found myself turning back and trying to figure out who was who. Apart from this, this is a perfect novel. If you have the chance, please buy it, I guarantee you have never read such an intriguing book.
Top reviews from other countries
Recomendo se você tem tempo, paciência e curiosidade em compreender a história. Ela pode parecer um pouco lenta pra quem está acostumado com jornadas de herói épicas para salvar o mundo, encontrar a cura, etc. Não é pra salvar o mundo, é pra salvar a nós mesmos.
Mal posso esperar pra ler o próximo, comprei em inglês pra treinar a língua e foi uma ótima decisão! Tive dificuldade com uma palavra ou outra, mas no geral é tranquilo de compreender se você já tem um domínio básico.
Reviewed in Brazil on October 19, 2023
Recomendo se você tem tempo, paciência e curiosidade em compreender a história. Ela pode parecer um pouco lenta pra quem está acostumado com jornadas de herói épicas para salvar o mundo, encontrar a cura, etc. Não é pra salvar o mundo, é pra salvar a nós mesmos.
Mal posso esperar pra ler o próximo, comprei em inglês pra treinar a língua e foi uma ótima decisão! Tive dificuldade com uma palavra ou outra, mas no geral é tranquilo de compreender se você já tem um domínio básico.