Parable of the Sower
On sale
20th August 2019
Price: £10.99
The extraordinary, prescient NEW YORK TIMES-bestselling novel.
‘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. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published’ GLORIA STEINEM
‘Unnervingly prescient and wise’ YAA GYASI
—
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.
PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
‘In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time… for sheer peculiar prescience, Butler’s novel may be unmatched’ NEW YORKER
‘Butler’s prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision’ GUARDIAN
‘Octavia Butler was a visionary’ VIOLA DAVIS
‘One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had’ JUNOT DIAZ
‘An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center’ VANITY FAIR
‘Butler writes with such a familiarity that the alien is welcome and intriguing. She really artfully exposes our human impulse to self-destruct’ LUPITA NYONG’O
‘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. This is what makes Parable of the Sower even more impressive than it was when first published’ GLORIA STEINEM
‘Unnervingly prescient and wise’ YAA GYASI
—
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.
PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
‘In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time… for sheer peculiar prescience, Butler’s novel may be unmatched’ NEW YORKER
‘Butler’s prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision’ GUARDIAN
‘Octavia Butler was a visionary’ VIOLA DAVIS
‘One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had’ JUNOT DIAZ
‘An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center’ VANITY FAIR
‘Butler writes with such a familiarity that the alien is welcome and intriguing. She really artfully exposes our human impulse to self-destruct’ LUPITA NYONG’O
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Reviews
One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate the impact she has had
Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis with compelling precision
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
Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again
One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art
[A] must-read novel
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
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
A searing, caustic examination of bizarre and alien practices on the third planet from the sun
One of the most original, thought-provoking works examining race and identity
If you haven't read Butler, you don't yet understand how rich the possibilities of science fiction can be
Butler's books are exceptional
Few writers in our field are so good at blending page-turners with philosophical questions so seamlessly
A dark, compelling and still horribly resonant time travel story
Impossible to turn away from once you've devoured the first few pages
[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human