Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Parable of the Sower
    Parable of the Sower
    Parable of the Sower
    Audiobook12 hours

    Parable of the Sower

    Written by Octavia E. Butler

    Narrated by Lynne Thigpen

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Octavia E. Butler paints a stunning portrait of an all-too-believable near future. As with Kindred and her other critically-acclaimed novels, Parable of the Sower skillfully combines startling visionary and socially realistic concepts. God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs-and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars. For her elegant, literate works of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler has been compared to Toni Morrison and Ursula K. LeGuin. Narrator Lynne Thigpen's melodious voice will hold you spellbound throughout this compelling parable of modern society.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 26, 2009
    ISBN9781440761577
    Parable of the Sower
    Author

    Octavia E. Butler

    Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a renowned African American author of several award-winning novels, including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993, and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel in 1995. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

    More audiobooks from Octavia E. Butler

    Related to Parable of the Sower

    Titles in the series (2)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Parable of the Sower

    4.5/5

    1,252 ratings137 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I hesitate to call this post-apocalyptic, as the world Lauren knows is still crumbling. Dystopian will work; society is fragmented, neighborhoods protect only their own, mob rule and survival lof the fittest are dominant, there are no jobs and water is more expensive than food. A 15 year old girl who has hyperempathy (she feels the pain of others - literally) is our narrator; she watches everything and everyone around her and she uses that to develop a new faith, Earthseed. The essence of her faith is "God is Change". When her small neighborhood of safety is devastated, she starts north, in search of a new life - and as she travels, others join her. She tells them of Earthseed and gains converts. Eventually they find a place where they decide to try and start the first Earthseed community.Butler's writing is simple yet delivers punches. The society she describes is not unimaginable at all, in fact it's easily imaginable and frighteningly recognizable. Lauren, the central character, is intriguing - she's only 15 but comes across as an old soul - a very old soul. The story is simple, covering several years in an a journal format - but very engaging. I really enjoyed it and will be reading more.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the dystopian/post-apocalyptic elements, which felt plausible enought to satisfy me. It's also great as a coming-of-age story through difficult times. The protagonist, Lauren, is a strong and interesting character.
      My one caveat is that I found the attempts at creating a new belief system (Earthseed) dull and unconvincing, and wasn't sure how seriously I was meant to take this. This edition has a Q&A with the author included though, and the answer seems to be: quite seriously.
      It's easy enough to glide over those bits if you're not into them, and the story rips along pretty well after the first 100 pages.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      In the near future, the climate has deteriorated to the point that people are living in a wasteland. Lauren lives in this post-apocalyptic California in a walled-off cul-de-sac where the residents of her small neighborhood try to survive. She goes beyond this, knowing that one day she’ll have to survive on the outside, so she trains and prepares for this eventuality. It comes when vandals and junkies burn down the neighborhood, leaving only Lauren, Zahra, and Harry to survive. They decide to head north together, and gain new group members as they travel. Along the way, she shares her philosophy/religion with them. It’s called Earthseed and the goal is for people to reach heaven literally, by going out into space. It’s a long shot, but all such things have to start somewhere.It's so rare to find a book that focuses on the faith of a teenage girl, particularly when that faith is one she created herself. Many of the Earthseed verses were already familiar to me, as they have been quoted often. This is a found family story, where the members of Lauren’s group are coming together for safety and may or may not betray each other. The characters are complicated and no one is without faults. If you are interested in strong female characters, post-apocalyptic tales, or all-too prescient science fiction, then you will enjoy this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I found this book on a list of climate change fiction - cli-fi. It's more just generic dystopian, but water is scarce so there's that. The book was written in 1993 and takes place around 2026. Probably things won't descend quite that far quite that fast, but then again Butler might have got the timing just right. She covers an interesting stage in collapse, where a small community has been staying in their house and protecting them, then their little neighborhood is overrun by gangs and just a few of them survive. These few head north and get started on a way to live off the land. I read right through this in a few days. It definitely pulls the reader along. A core feature of the book is how the protagonist is working out a new religion, a sincere attempt at understanding reality. A curious feature is that it includes interstellar colonization, but the reality portrayed by the novel is one where interstate colonization is practically unachievable. The idea seems to be that we need some heaven to hope for. Maybe it's just that Butler writes science fiction and a book can't find its way to that section of the bookstore without including interstellar colonization. For me that did help the book's plot a bit, because it got me thinking - how in the world will our protagonist work her way into a rocket ship from such a bleak start?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This is my fourth read from Butler, and it's definitely the one I liked the least. The setting is bleak and dystopian, which is mostly not my bag but with which I can get on if I'm sufficiently intrigued by plot or characters. This doesn't have a plot? And I didn't warm to any of the characters. It honestly just felt like one brutal encounter after another until I ran out of pages. The religion the main character "discovers" is sort of compelling but not enough so to generate interest in the face of the other lack; likewise her ability to feel physically the pain of others, which just kind of sits there, being a nuisance when killing is inevitable but otherwise not going anywhere. I know this is the beginning of a duology, but unfortunately nothing about this prompts me to consider carrying on. This is the first time I've given an Octavia Butler book less than four stars, so I may just have been on the wrong wavelength or something for this one. YMMV.***For Book Club

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      In a disturbingly plausible near future where government services have faltered and people are basically left to fend for themselves, Lauren, a teenage girl, has a realistic view of her future and is preparing for the worst. While she's honing her survival skills, she also creates a new religion which she calls Earthseed. The main tenet of her religion is that God is change.From what others have told me, this book should not be sold as a stand-alone - apparently all of the complaints I have about the first book are resolved in the second.So having said that, here are my complaints.My biggest problem is that Lauren's religion is completely implausible. Lauren does not have the charisma or the power of a prophet. She comes across as just a girl who thought of some stuff and wrote it down. It does not seem believable that so many people would follow her leadership and start to believe in her religion.Lauren's empathy also bothered me, but mostly because it is mis-named. When she called it "empathy," I assumed it was an emotional connection with the people around her. Instead, it is entirely physical, and only works with people she can see. So if she sees someone with a wound, she feels their pain. This is treated rather inconsistently throughout the book, like Butler didn't really think through all the implications of it.Unfortunately, this book didn't leave me wanting more, so I don't have any plans to read the second book, even though that might change my opinion.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      wow… so thankful for the spirit of octavia butler. this is a transformative and awakening listen.
    • 3/5
      I just wasn't as impressed with this book as I had hoped to be, as a fan of Octavia Butler's. The prose lacked flow, and perhaps in an age of Walking Dead and Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it just fell short of being a compelling read. I just don't see the award winning novelist in this particular book.
    • 4/5
      I'm glad I finally read [Parable of the Sower]. It was published in 1993, but it's so timely now: It's set it a world of runaway global warming, a wrecked economy, eroding labor laws, police corruption, and hostility towards migrants. The protagonist develops her own worldview while learning how to build and maintain a community when everything's falling apart. I cared about the characters and hope everything works out for them. I look forward to seeing what happens next in [Parable of the Talents].
    • 5/5
      Just brilliant. It works as straight forward survival thriller of surviving in a world breaking down because of climate changes and other factors. Also it has deeper themes of religious belief, generational struggles and how to fix a broken society.
    • 5/5
      beautifully scary. life changing book. octavia saw the future and wrote about it.
    • 5/5
      The very beginning of the book is very preachy, well a lot of this book is preachy because it's literally the story of a young woman creating her own religion. I'd say the story was overall enjoyable despite the preachiness of it all. I really enjoyed the way this was written and how, it started out hopeless, like a lot of Butler's works. Then, there's a little light at the end of the tunnel and the story suddenly becomes hopeful.

      This is my second time reading Parable of the Sower and I finally understand that it's about community and keeping one another safe. Protecting one another in crisis. That is the answer to the question, "what do we do when disaster strikes?"

      I also love the diversity in this book. The characters were very diverse like all other Butler books.

      The beginning of the book was a bit slow even though the book was interesting overall. Therefore, I'm giving this 4.5 stars out of 5.
    • 5/5
      It pulls you in and makes you think about who you are and what you’d value in the midst of chaos.
    • 3/5
      Starts out compelling but fades. Really slow second half. And the end is a not satisfying.
    • 4/5
      Very topical to todays world, politically and environmentally.
    • 2/5
      No. Hard hard no.

      An 18 year old from a tiny isolated community who’s read a narrow couple of books… with a narcissistic God-complex, and apparently no knowledge of *ahem* non-Abrahamic religions. Sure. Yeah. Obvious natural superhuman leader.

      Funny that they hired a middle aged narrator with the gravitas and timber of age, rather than the whiny inanity of a real teen.

      I’ll say this… based on the last couple of years, I believe Butler might well be right that America and Americans would be this awful.

      ETA. Holy moly. The insane denialist ignorant right wingers on here, who just don’t find global warming and extreme inequality realistic (lol!!!)! The irony burns… literally.

      Butlers vision of the future “dystopia” is extremely close to being fulfilled very soon. I just found the main character entirely ludicrous.
    • 5/5

      One of the most upsetting dystopias I've encountered, perhaps because it describes no great calamity but merely the changing climate that seems at this point inevitable, and humans at their very worst: greedy, short-sighted, oppressive, and cruel. Lauren is one of those protagonists you cannot help but get heavily invested in, and I gotta say, I find her religious philosophy pretty enticing…

    • 5/5
      Powerful and gripping story. I found myself deeply invested in almost every character. Octavia Butler was a prophet.
    • 5/5
      Such a deep and profound book. The truth of it will linger and scare you into seeing it in your daily life. I read this book as an introduction to Butler’s work and now I find myself captivated and yet frighten by it.
    • 5/5
      Such an incredible book. It felt less like fiction and more like a look at our future, and our present, and our past.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written and read! The dystopian world of Earthseed feels scarily close (the story stars in 2024) and realistic and makes you wonder how long until we really see our society collapse in this very manner.
    • 4/5
      Very Well written, Strong characters, and Interesting plot and I see the purpose. But i cant help but feel the plot leaned so much on the birth of a new religion that everything and everyone in the story was built in service to that. Nothing wrong with that approach. I feel that there was more potential to explore beyond the birth of a religious movement.
    • 5/5
      Oof that was grim. Not as angry as I thought it might be.

      I appreciated the forthright language in the midst of horrors. No prettying it up or making the bad things palatable - they just were.

      The religion and stuff....eh? It's a purpose to live for.
    • 4/5
      Wow! This book is scary. A dystopian novel from before that was a thing, and the terrifying plot seems completely plausible. Gorgeously written and so original. I have no excuse for not reading Butler before, but I cannot wait to read more.
    • 4/5
      I did like the story, however, it seemed as though every character had the same vernacular. And I'm not referring to the narrator. Despite them coming from different backgrounds and some had little to no education, you would never know it, because all the characters used the same vocabulary. Other than that, I enjoyed the story.
    • 5/5
      A powerful story of a future not too far off from where our country find itself today! God is change. Embracing and adapting to change brings us closer to divinity! God exists within all of us! Change is unifying and change is unapologetic.
    • 4/5
      Such wonderful theology, such a wonderful main character. I wish it hadn't been embedded in such a horror movie. Cannibalism, burning people alive, relentless killing. It reminded me in that sense of Geraldine Brooks' YEAR OF WONDERS, which was about the plague. There you had people suffocating in pig manure, someone carrying around a dead baby till its head fell off... same kind of thing, has me reading with steel guardrails around my brain so as not to actually internalize anything.So about the good parts! Theology! God is change. Your job is to do your best to mold that God to serve your ends.Main character! It's all led by a supernaturally strong young African American woman. She is the sower. She calls her religion Earthseed. Each chapter begins with some of her "verses". "The only lasting truth is change. God is change." "Create no images of God... The universe is God's self-portrait."
    • 5/5
      A lot of the dystopian stories I have read feel ‘safe’ because what triggered them doesn’t seem like it’ll happen. Often because it involves some technology we don’t have. And, even though Butler doesn’t tell us the how or why the world has reached its current point, it feels like we could be there. That makes reading this so much more poignant and at times difficult to keep reading. Though, that is precisely the reason to read it.Not everything that happens makes sense, but, not because of poor storytelling, but it feels like purposeful choice to make it feel real.
    • 5/5
      So good. A very difficult read but entirely worth it.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read this year. Fantastic world building and great characters. You will feel her hope through the worst of humanity.