Parable of the Sower: the New York Times bestseller

Paperback Published on: 04/06/2026
Price: £10.99
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Bookseller Reviews

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Parable of the Sower
So close to the future that is scary!
I read Kindred and I absolutely adored it so I definitely wanted to read more of Butler. And she did not disappointed at all. It is a very hard book to re... READ MORE
Iara at Reading
Parable of the Sower
A dark potential future that hits hard
Everyone knows about The Handmaid's Tale. But Octavia E Butler has been writing about women and injustice too and she is well worth reading. Parable of the... READ MORE
Sabrina at Aylesbury

Synopsis

A beautiful new edition of a modern classic by celebrated, award-winning author, Octavia E. Butler. With an introduction by Levar Burton and an afterword by N.K. Jemisin.

'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' GLORIA STEINEM

We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.

The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from the violence breaking out across America. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others, records everything she sees of the fracturing world in her journal.

One terrible night, her home is overrun, and Lauren sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown.

But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of a better way to live - and the birth of a new faith that will change humanity forever.

Praise for Octavia E. Butler

'Unnervingly prescient and wise' YAA GYASI

'Butler's prose, always pared back to the bone, delineates the painful paradoxes of metamorphosis
with compelling precision' GUARDIAN

'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century. One cannot exaggerate
the impact she has had' JUNOT DIAZ

'Butler's evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human' NEW YORK TIMES

'An icon of the Afrofuturism world, envisioning literary realms that placed black characters front and center' VANITY FAIR

'Octavia Butler was a visionary' VIOLA DAVIS

Publisher information

  • Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
  • ISBN: 9781035441372
  • Number of pages: 336
  • Dimensions: 196 x 128 x 32 mm
  • Weight: 240g
  • Languages: English

Customer Reviews

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Parable of the Sower
A powerful novel of a potential future
This book was originally published in 1993 but the world it depicts – California in the mid 2020s, torn apart by destructive climate change and drought and... READ MORE
Jane Skudder