A hunger for a new war

The feisty teen heroine of The Hunger Games, Katniss, is as tough in the movie as in the books, says Declan Burke, and both adults and kids adore her

A publishing phenomenon and a big-budget movie, The Hunger Games was born when author Suzanne Collins was TV channel-surfing between reality shows and the US invasion of Iraq. What if, she asked herself, war became a TV show?

The result, The Hunger Games, is both ancient and new. The tale has echoes of the Romans’ gladiatorial games and the Greek myth of Theseus, who was sent as a sacrifice by Athens to be fed to the Minotaur on Crete, but The Hunger Games is set in the future, in a dystopian world in which America has been replaced by Panem, where the wealthy Capitol rules over 12 impoverished districts.