Book of the Week The Hunger Games by Suzanne CollinsThe Hunger Games is a young adult novel written by American television writer and novelist Suzanne Collins. It was first published on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, in hardcover. It is written in the voice of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where the countries of North America once existed. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, holds hegemony over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games are an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12 to 18 from each of the 12 districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle until only one person is left.