The Hunger Games
Children killing children on television for the entertainment of the powerful. Collins made it addictive and never let you forget it is horrifying.
Katniss of District Twelve
Suzanne Collins's 2008 novel is set in Panem, a post-apocalyptic North America where the Capitol keeps its twelve districts obedient by forcing each one to send two children annually to compete in a televised fight to the death. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers to replace her twelve-year-old sister Prim, she enters the arena with everything to lose and very little reason to trust anyone. The novel is a critique of reality television, spectacle, and state violence wrapped in a propulsive survival story. It spawned a trilogy and four films grossing over $2.9 billion worldwide.
Reading The Hunger Games
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"I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.
"Suzanne Collins · The Hunger Games
Collins said she came up with the idea while channel-surfing and flipping between footage of the Iraq War and reality television competition shows. The juxtaposition struck her as something she needed to explore.
Collins based the structure partly on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and the Roman gladiatorial games. She wanted to write a story where the spectacle of violence was examined rather than simply consumed.