The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Suzanne Collins on the Young Coriolanus Snow
Yes, we are back in Panem, where Katniss Everdeen won the 74th Hunger Games in the first book of one of the most popular and defining trilogies for this generation of readers. This time we return to discover the past of President Coriolanus Snow in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), a prequel published ten years after Mockingjay, the final book of the original series.
Author: Suzanne Collins
Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020)
Format: English Kindle edition (Scholastic)
Scope: Hunger Games prequel set 64 years before the original trilogy
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/B07V29ZDW7 (ASIN B07V29ZDW7)
The Villain’s Side of the Story
Collins moves back in time to see the story from the perspective of the cruel, bloodthirsty villain Snow: his origins, his motivations and his fears. She does so in a country in very different conditions from the one we knew, with rougher, more primitive Games. And we do not stay only in the Capitol: we also visit other parts of Panem.
The Tenth Hunger Games
It is the morning of the reaping that will open the tenth Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one chance at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, and its fate depends on Coriolanus outcharming, outwitting and outmanoeuvring his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him: he has been humiliated with the girl tribute from District 12. Now their fates are inextricably bound together.
Lucy Gray
Coriolanus is assigned the tribute nobody wants: the girl from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird. But Lucy Gray is no ordinary tribute. She belongs to the Covey, a band of travelling musicians, and at the reaping she sings defiantly into the cameras, instantly capturing the Capitol’s attention. Her songs run through the whole book, and readers of the trilogy will recognise some of them, including "The Hanging Tree", which Katniss will sing decades later. Her name echoes Wordsworth’s poem "Lucy Gray", one of several literary threads Collins weaves through the novel.
Inventing the Spectacle
In the tenth year the Games are a brutal, shabby affair held in a ruined arena, and few people in the Capitol watch them. The novel shows how they became the polished entertainment of the trilogy: Coriolanus and his fellow students propose ideas such as sponsorship, betting and interviews, while the sinister Head Gamemaker, Dr Volumnia Gaul, treats the arena as a laboratory. The dean of the academy, Casca Highbottom, has his own guilty connection to the Games’ origins.
Three Parts
The book is divided into three parts, "The Mentor", "The Prize" and "The Peacekeeper", and the last takes Coriolanus to District 12 itself, to the woods and the lake that Katniss will later know. His friendship with Sejanus Plinth, a classmate from a District 2 family whose conscience rebels against the Games, becomes the moral test of the novel. Collins prefaces the parts with quotations from political philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, and the debate between them about human nature, whether people are naturally violent or naturally good, is at the centre of the story.
On Screen
Francis Lawrence, who directed three of the earlier films, adapted the novel in 2023, with Tom Blyth as Coriolanus and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray. A second prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, followed in 2025.
Ambition, Power and Control
Coriolanus is a calculating young man, focused on excellence at any cost and obsessed with the future he believes he deserves. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a gripping, dark novel about choices, ambition, power and control, and about how human beings live with them. It works best after the original trilogy, when you know exactly who this young man will become.
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