Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler, 1993
Science fiction FantasyContemporary fictionLiterary fiction
A teenager invents a religion of change as America collapses around her, and writes down what survival might require.
Feels like dread, hope and unease. About faith, power and memory.
A page from the book
The quiet radicalism of admitting you don’t know enough.
I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic. Octavia E. Butler.Butler won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995, two years after this novel, and used the freedom it bought to write its sequel, Parable of the Talents.
Books that feel like this
More by Octavia E. Butler
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler, 1979
A Black woman in 1970s Los Angeles is pulled back to a Maryland plantation whenever a white boy’s life is in danger — and must keep him alive to survive.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Parable of the Sower like?
- Feels like dread, hope and unease. About faith, power and memory.
- What should I read after Parable of the Sower?
- If you liked Parable of the Sower, try The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau), The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon) and Life of Pi (Yann Martel).
A taste of the feed
A city lit entirely by lamps, and the dark it can't explain.
In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great floodlamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again. When the lights were off, as they were between nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so dark that people might as well have been wearing blindfolds.
The City of Ember · Jeanne DuPrau
What it means to be told your blood is the sea.
To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.
The Priory of the Orange Tree · Samantha Shannon
What if death is not life's enemy but its jealous lover?
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity — it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
Life of Pi · Yann Martel
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