Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler (1993)
“In 1993, Octavia Butler described exactly the America of 2024 — and then showed us the only way out.”
Short Summary
It is 2024. Lauren Olamina, eighteen, lives in a walled neighborhood in a burning California. Her father is a Baptist preacher; she is quietly building her own religion, Earthseed, whose central truth is that God is Change. When her neighborhood is destroyed by a drug-fueled mob, Lauren escapes north with only a backpack, her journal, and her dangerous secret: she is a hyperempath, feeling others' pain and pleasure as her own. Walking north on a highway through a collapsed America, she gathers a small community of survivors. By the novel's end she has written the first verses of the Earthseed books and planted the first seeds of something that might outlast the fire.
Detailed Summary
Lauren Oya Olamina is a fifteen-year-old Black girl when her journal begins on July 20, 2024, in Robledo, California — a fictional suburb of Los Angeles. Her neighborhood is a fortress: a ring of houses with walls, gates, and neighbors who take turns standing watch at night. Outside the walls, civil...