[2] Parable of the Sower was the winner of multiple awards, including the 1994 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and has been adapted into an opera and a graphic novel.

[4] Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager.

Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with "hyper-empathy" or "sharing": the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly the abundant pain in her world.

Lauren grows up in the remnants of a gated community in Robledo, California, twenty miles from Los Angeles, where she and her neighbors struggle but are separate from the abject poverty of the world outside.

The newly elected radical, authoritarian President Donner loosens labor protections, creating a rise in company towns owned by foreign businesses.

For a time, he survives by joining a group of ruthless thieves who value him for his rare literacy, but he is eventually found dead after torture.

Interracial relationships are stigmatized, women fear sexual assault, and slavery has returned in the form of indentured servitude.

The various false starts for the novel can now be found among Butler's papers at the Huntington Library, as described in an article at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

An early concert version of the opera was performed as part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival in New York City in 2015.

[10][11][12] The finished version had its world premiere in Abu Dhabi in November 2017 and has been performed in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Singapore, Amsterdam, and elsewhere.