The Hunger Games (Book)

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• The Hunger Games Book Cover
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Book Cover
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Cover

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The Hunger Games (Book)

The Hunger Games is a 2008  young adullt novel by American writer Suzanne Collins It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the post-apocolyptic nation of Panem, where the countries of North America once existed. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games are an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death.

The book received mostly positive feedback from major reviewers and authors, including authors Stephen King and Stephenie Meyer. It was praised for its storyline and character development, though some reviewers have noted similarities between Collins' book and the Koushun Takami's Battle Royale (1999), both of which deliver tales equally gripping, yet less dark than the genre's original master work: King's The Long Walk (1979). In writing The Hunger Games, Collins drew upon Greek mythology and contemporary reality literature for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of Publishers Weeklys "Best Books of the Year" in 2008.

The Hunger Games was first published in hardcover on September 14, 2008 by Scholastic, featuring a cover designed byTim O'Brien. It has since been released in paperback and also as an audiobook and ebook. After an initial print of 200,000, the book had sold 800,000 copies by February 2010. Since its release, The Hunger Games has been translated into 26 languages, and publishing rights have been sold in 38 territories. The novel is the first in The Hunger Games trilogy, followed by Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010). A film adaption, directed by Gary Ross and co-written and co-produced by Collins herself, was released in 2012.