When Octavia E. Butler wrote “Parable of the Sower” back in 1993, she did not have a crystal ball to see the future but her book, set in 2024, is a prescient study in the corruption of power and a world facing climate disaster and economic ruin.
The book, which was named a New York Times bestseller in 2020, is a focal point of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven. Festival organizers and the Yale Schwarzman Center (YSC) are undertaking their first major partnership in co-presenting an operatic adaptation of “Parable of the Sower” June 21-22 at the Shubert Theatre while 50 area organizations are joining in to make the book the capstone of the city’s One City, One Read program.