OCTAVIA E.
BUTLER
THE PARABLE OF THE SHOWER
Translation Vangelis Poulios
California, 2024. The newly elected President of the United States has plunged the country into an unprecedented crisis in his attempt to “make America great again.” Social exclusion, climate collapse, epidemics, poverty, and violence are rampant. Barbarism reigns, and everyone is desperately searching for even the smallest sense of safety.
California, 2024. The newly elected President of the United States has plunged the country into an unprecedented crisis in his attempt to “make America great again.” Social exclusion, climate collapse, epidemics, poverty, and violence are rampant. Barbarism reigns, and everyone is desperately searching for even the smallest sense of safety.
Eighteen-year-old Lauren Olamina, the daughter of a Black pastor, was born with a condition that makes her experience the emotions and pain of others as if they were her own. In her journal, she records life inside this dark dystopia shaped by hyper-capitalism and environmental collapse.
Then, overnight, catastrophe strikes. Her entire family is killed by arsonists — themselves perhaps products, or victims, of the same diseased society. Forced to flee north on foot, Lauren embarks on a dangerous journey in search of safety and the possibility of a new beginning.
The dystopian future imagined thirty-five years ago by Octavia E. Butler, author of Kindred, no longer feels far removed from the realities of our own time. Parable of the Sower, the first volume in the Earthseed series, unfolds during the decade of the 2020s — a decade in which the last spark of the old world may either die out completely, plunging humanity into darkness, or survive long enough to ignite something new.
