LoveReading Says
Born in California in 1948, African-American author Octavia Butler was the first science fiction writer to ever receive a MacArthur Fellowship (aka ‘’the Genius Grant’’) and one of the few women of colour to achieve success and recognition in a genre traditionally dominated by white men. Her, startlingly original and astonishingly prescient work transcends the conventions of her chosen genre, exploring issues such as social justice, real-world power structures, empathy and ecology.
Octavia Butler’s tenth novel ‘Parable of the Sower’ was originally published in 1993 and is set in an all -too-plausible version of 2024 ravaged by climate change, the depredations of disaster capitalism, religious fanaticism and a collapsing infrastructure. The novel’s heroine is a young Black woman living in a gated community who suffers from ‘’hyperempathy’, which makes her feel the pain of others. When her home is destroyed she gathers a community around her and creates a new belief system named ‘Earthseed’, believing that humankind’s destiny and ultimate salvation lies beyond the doomed and dying Earth world out among the stars.
Parable of the Sower finally became a New York Times Bestseller in 2020, during the dying days of the Trump Administration. As a nightmarish vision of a dystopian future, the novel is, in the surface at least, as chilling and prophetic as The Handmaid’s Tale, Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Brave New World but, inspired by her own history and the struggles of those around her, Octavia Butler never allowed herself to surrender to total pessimism and Parable of the Sower ends on a note of optimism and hope for a better future through collective effort, community and mutual support.
In an epigram for the book’s unfinished sequel, ‘Parable of the Trickster’ Octavia Butler wrote:
There is nothing new
under the sun,
but there are new suns.
Selected by Stephen Ellcock, Our Spring 2023 Guest Editor. Click here to read the full Guest Editor Piece.
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Parable of the Sower Synopsis
We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal.
Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves.
Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781472263667 |
| Publication date: |
20th August 2019 |
| Author: |
Octavia E. Butler |
| Publisher: |
Headline Book Publishing an imprint of Headline Publishing Group |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
320 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Dystopian and utopian fiction
|
| Other Genres: |
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Octavia E. Butler Press Reviews
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had -- Junot Diaz
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision - Guardian
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story - Independent
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human - New York Times
No novel I've read this year has felt as relevant, as gut-wrenching or as essential... If you've ever tweeted All Lives Matter , someone needs to shove Kindred into your hand, and quickly - The Pool
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again - Harlan Ellison
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art - Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
[A] must-read novel - BBC
Everyone should read at least one novel by the grand dame of science fiction, and Kindred is a perfect (and harrowing and disturbing and brilliant) place to start - Refinery 29
The immediate effect of reading Octavia Butler's Kindred is to make every other time travel book in the world look as if it's wimping out... This is a brilliant book, utterly absorbing, very well written, and deeply distressing. It's very hard to read, not because it's not good but because it's so good - Tor
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun - Kirkus
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity - Los Angeles Times
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages - Starburst
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be - Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Butler's books are exceptional - Village Voice
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly -- Cory Doctorow -
