Parable of the Sower

Critical Praise

"Gripping...poignant...succeeds on multiple levels." -New York Times Book Review

"Octavia E. Butler is one of the finest voices in fiction--period....A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature." -Washington Post Book World on Parable of the Talents

"Literate...thoughtful, and a real gut-wrencher....What makes Butler's fiction compelling is that it is as crisply detailed as journalism." -Washington Post Book World

"Artfully conceived and elegantly written....Butler's success in making Lauren's subsequent odyssey feel real is only the most obvious measure of this fine novel's worth." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A prophetic odyssey." -Essence

"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 amid saplings." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"What 'cyberpunk' author William Gibson does for young, disaffected white fans of high tech and low life, Octavia Estelle Butler does for people of color. She gives us a future." -Vibe

"The world she creates is touchingly familiar and yet chillingly transformed...make[s] us share the narrator's longing for a better world and the author's belief in our ability to make it real." -San Jose Mercury News

"Simple, direct, and deeply felt." -Library Journal

"[She creates] some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre...real women caught in impossible situations." -Village Voice

"A new Octavia Butler novel is an exciting event....She is one of those rare authors who pays serious attention to the way human beings actually work together and against each other, and she does so with extraordinary plausibility." -Locus

"Butler sets the imagination free, blending the real and the possible." -United Press International

"Like William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, and other "cyberpunk" writers, she uses disciplined extrapolation to explore the dark possibilities of the near future....Butler simply takes existing helter-skelter and turns up the volume a few notches....Since the 1992 riots, premonitions of Butler's low-rise dystopia, with urban decay metastasizing in the heart of suburbia, have become commonplace." -from Ecology of Fear, by Mike Davis