The Hunger Games

Outline

The Hunger Games (2008) is set in Panem, a future nation where the powerful Capitol forces young people from its districts to compete in a deadly televised contest each year. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister’s place, she must rely on her skills, courage, and wits to survive. Suzanne Collins’s novel explores injustice, power, media spectacle, and resistance.

• Katniss Everdeen, sixteen, volunteers to take her younger sister's place in a deadly contest, an act that sets the whole story in motion.
• Panem's Capitol forces young people from its districts to fight in a televised contest every year, showing how power can be held through fear.
• Survival in the arena depends on skill, courage and wit, not only on strength.
• The novel looks at media spectacle, showing how a brutal event can be packaged as public entertainment.
• Collins builds the story around injustice and resistance, and Katniss's fight to survive grows into courage and hope.

Suzanne Collins is an American author and television writer best known for The Hunger Games series, which has sold tens of millions of copies and been adapted into successful films. Her other books include Catching Fire, Mockingjay, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.