Background information

Suzanne Collins and her background

Suzanne Collins is an American writer of novels and television scripts and the author of The Hunger Games series. Collins started her career writing scripts for various children’s television shows on the popular children’s TV channel Nickelodeon. 

Collins started writing novels with the children’s series The Undertale Chronicles. The first book of the series, Gregor the Overlander, was inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The Undertale Chronicles is a five-novel epic fantasy children’s series, which was relatively well received by audiences and translated in ten other languages. Similarly to The Hunger Games, The Undertale Chronicles were written as adventure novels accessible to young readers and  dealt with the complex themes of war and genocide. 

Collins then started her second series, The Hunger Games. The series was an instant global success, becoming a bestseller and breaking records. Collins adapted the novels to screen herself, which allowed the adaptations to remain faithful to her novels. Following the huge success of the movies, Collins was named one of the most influential people of 2010 by Time magazine, and in 2012 she was announced as the highest-selling author on Kindle, Amazon’s ebook platform. 

In 2020, Collins released a prequel to The Hunger Games series. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tells the story of the future President Snow and the novel is set 64 years before the events of The Hunger Games. Collins has also worked on adapting this novel for the screen, with the film adaptation being set to release in late 2023.

The inspiration behind the novel

Theseus and the Minotaur

Collins drew in...