The Hunger Games (novel) The Hunger Games (novel) The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is 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 critical acclaim from major
The Hunger Games (film) pulse-racing entertainment value". Reynolds also spoke highly of Lawrence's performance and director Gary Ross, whose "rough and ready handheld camerawork" meant that viewers were "with Katniss for every blood-flecked moment of her ordeal in the combat arena". However, film critic David Thomson of the magazine "The New Republic" called it a "terrible movie", criticizing it for a lack of character development and unclear presentation of the violence, describing the latter as "un-American". Eric Goldman of IGN awarded the film four out of five stars, stating that director Gary Ross "gets the tone of The Hunger Games right. This is a