a book
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler · 2000 · 336 pages
Parable of the Sower is the Butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman with the hereditary train of "hyperempathy"—which causes her to feel others’ pain as her own—sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown.
recommended by 8 people
sourced from public statements
Gloria Steinem
“If there is one thing scarier than a dystopian novel about the future, it’s one written in the past that has already begun to come true.”↗
DeRay Mckesson
“Kindred is an incredible book. So is Parable of the Sower.”↗
Cleo Constantine Abram
“1. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. prescient beyond belief. my highest rec.”↗
Abbi Jacobson
“This story is so brilliant that I am reading the follow-up and, again, rationing what I have left. Sower takes place in the 2020s in a dystopian Los Angeles where water and other resources are limited. It’s scaring the s— out of me, because I feel like we’re not far from this sort of dystopia. But it also drew me in to the main character and her journey.”↗
Alice Korngold
“Yes, a brilliant book. #ParableOfTheSower by #OctaviaButler. I started reading it just before the COVID lockdown & massive death tolls. Then rushed to finish it, since the dystopian future began feeling too terrifyingly real/possible.”↗
