The book, the first in the Hunger Games trilogy and published by Scholastic, is a young adult novel set in Panem, a shining capitol surrounded by 12 outlying districts in North America.
"The Hunger Games" tackles issues like severe poverty, starvation, oppression, and the effects of war among others. According to Collins, it was probably her dad's influence that drew you to such serious subject matter.
"He was a military specialist, a historian, and a doctor of political science. When I was a kid, he was gone for a year in Vietnam. It was very important to him that we understood about certain aspects of life.
"So, it wasn't enough to visit a battlefield, we needed to know why the battle occurred, how it played out, and the consequences. Fortunately, he had a gift for presenting history as a fascinating story. He also seemed to have a good sense of exactly how much a child could handle, which is quite a bit," the American novelist and television writer says. MORE PTI ZMN
