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From a celebrated, award-winning author, a modern classic about a young girl fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Margaret Atwood.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith ... and a startling vision of human destiny.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/26/2026)
I'm reading THE CROSSROADS by CJ Box. Just finished PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler for a book group discussion last evening. Good discussion. I read BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan last week and enjoyed it.
-Dotti_A
Did you read any books in 2025 that are widely considered classics? If so, which ones and why?
OK, so after I posted this question of the week, I got to wondering what would be considered a classic. What do you think? The only three I've read that I'd say most people would call classics are: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Lolita by Vladimir...
-kim.kovacs
New York Public Library - Most checked out books for the year
Here's their list for the entire city, and then broken down by borough. Which borough would you be in, based on the books people there have checked out? Citywide James by Percival Everett The God of the Woods by Liz Moore Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros All Fours by Mir...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (9/04/2025)
I'm about halfway through https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/22821/the-loneliness-of-sonia-and-sunny The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai and loving it. It's on the longlist for the Booker Prize and is also nominated for the Kirkus Prize, so I e...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (8/28/2025)
I'm reading The Hunter's Daughter and I'm totally wrapped up in it. I had a hard time putting it down last night & I'm eager to get back to it today. I had no clue what it was about when I signed up for it and was pleasantly surprised. After that, I'm going to start one of the Booker nominated no...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (8/14/2025)
I'm reading The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and Who Is Government by Michael Lewis. Don't let the title of Lewis's book fool you- it is far from dry and a must read after all the reports about laying off thousands of "lazy" federal government employees. These stories highlight people w...
-Jill_Mercier
What are you reading this week? (7/17/2025)
No worried, @Carol_B ! When you hit Reply, the person you're replying to shows up on the right side, just above your comments, so most folks should realize who you're responding to. :slightly_smiling_face: Regarding Octavia Butler, yeah, her books have been around for awhile (she died in 2006). S...
-kim.kovacs
Dystopian Fiction
Parable of the Sower , by Octavia Butler is a good one. Butler has a large body of work with a strong following if you like that one.
-Holly_Batsell
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/30/2025)
I recently read The Swans of Harlem and really enjoyed it. Also loved Night Flyer by Tiya Miles. Sadly I just dnf'd Dream Count by Adichie My Feb list of possibles includes: The Barn (thompson) Legacy (blackstock) Black in Blues (perry) Half American (delmont) Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments...
-Anne_Glasgow
"Butler tells her story with unusual warmth, sensitivity, honesty, and grace; though science fiction readers will recognize this future Earth, Lauren Olamina and her vision make this novel stand out like a tree among saplings." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A dystopian classic." ―Kirkus Reviews
"A real gut-wrencher ... What makes Butler's fiction compelling is that it is as crisply detailed as journalism... Often the smallest details are the most revelatory." ―Washington Post
"Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is a stunner. It's a terrifying vision of a dismal future brought on by the willful ignorance, racism and greed of human beings, and an eerily dangerous parallel to our present path. Ms. Butler gives us a satisfying protagonist in the hypersensitive teenager Lauren, whose courage and wits are an infinite source of inspiration." ―Wall Street Journal
This information about The Parable of the Sower was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Octavia E. Butler was a renowned writer who received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. She was the author of several award-winning novels including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future. Sales of her books have increased enormously since her death as the issues she addressed in her Afrofuturistic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant. She passed away on February 24, 2006.
If you liked The Parable of the Sower, try these:
by Michael Farris. Smith
Published 2023
In this "tense, brooding" novel, a young woman returns home with her child to her ghost-haunted father, while a religious extremist hunts the stormridden territory to find the girl who may be a savior in the apocalypse. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
by Susan Mihalic
Published 2021
A darkly gripping debut novel about a teenage girl's fierce struggle to reclaim her life from her abusive father.
by Sue Monk Kidd
Published 2021
An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.
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