Synopses & Reviews
Multiple award winner Octavia E. Butler's astonishing novels have made her a powerful, acclaimed voice in women's fiction, African-American literature, and modern science fiction.
Parable of the Sower is her stunning portrait of an all-too-believable near future, a twenty-first century of horror and hope.
GOD IS CHANGE
Lauren Olamina is an empath, crippled by the pain of others. Cloistered inside a neighborhood enclave in a U.S. where the distance between the haves and the have-nots has widened to a gaping chasm, she lives a protected life. But one night, violence explodes, and the walls of her neighborhood are smashed, annihilating Lauren's family and friends all she loves and knows.
Now the empath must face the world outside. Leading a tiny band of desperate followers through a thousand miles of Hell, she is a prophet bearing nothing but the promises of new life and a new faith...Earthseed.
America, 2025....From the ruins will arise a new prophet, a new path, a new day...
Review
"There isn't a page in this vivid and frightening story that fails to grip the reader." San Jose Mercury News
Review
"Impassioned...stands out as a testament to the author's enormous talent." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Splendid...immensely interesting...provocative, intelligent writing....A parable that deserves to be pondered." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"Enthralling...compelling and truly original." Denver Post
Review
"A new Octavia Butler novel is an exciting event....She is one of those rare authors who pay serious attention to the way human beings actually work together and against each other, and she does so with extraordinary plausibility." Locus
Review
"Sustained by skillful characterizations and an all-too-uncomfortable realism, Butler's narrative holds a mirror up close to our own contemporary blight of moral and economic disintegration and implicitly poses the question, Can we really let it get this bad?" Booklist
Synopsis
Forced to flee an America where anarchy and violence have completely taken over, empath Lauren Olamina who can feel the pain of others and is crippled by it becomes a prophet carrying the hope of a new world and a new faith christened "Earthseed." A stirring portrait of 21st-century America by the author of Wild Seed.
Synopsis
When unattended environmental and economic crises lead to social chaos, not even gated communities are safe. In a night of fire and death Lauren Olamina, a minister's young daughter, loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape. But what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.
About the Author
Octavia E. Butler is the author of many novels, including Dawn, Wild Seed, and Kindred. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Nebula Award, and she has twice won the Hugo Award. She passed away on February 24, 2006, at the age of 58.