Reading Parable of the Talents for the second time – in 2024 – is a particular sort of experience. These books, when written in the 1990s, depicted a dystopian near-future that was disturbingly believable. Now, here we are in 2024. Parable of the Talents depicts the election of a president promising to ‘make America great again’ (yes, in those words) whose Christian supremacist thugs engage in every violence imaginable from ‘witch burnings’ to child abduction.

While the Parable books are shelved as science fictional and as dystopian and each of these classifications describe some components of the novels, I don’t think this really captures them in their entirety. I very seldom re-read. These books, I think, almost require re-reading – there is so so much to grapple with here in terms of power relations, activist strategy, spirituality, community-building, and so much more. Absolutely recommend, with the note that the content warnings these books require are extensive. They are not easy reading, but they are brilliant and they are important.

Content warnings: racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, violence, murder, death, rape, sexual assault, sexual violence, human trafficking, slavery, kidnapping, grief, forcible confinement, physical abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, religious bigotry, child death, death of a parent, mental illness, medical content, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide, gun violence, fire / fire injury, injury detail, blood, gore, incest, torture, domestic abuse