Suzanne Collins publishes Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping

On 18 March 2025, author Suzanne Collins published Sunrise on the Reaping, her fifth book set in the world of The Hunger Games. It was released by Scholastic, her longtime publisher, and was widely anticipated by fans of the series.

The novel is a prequel set decades before the original trilogy. It follows sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, from District 12, who is chosen for the 50th Hunger Games, known as the second Quarter Quell, a special edition of the annual event with harsher rules. Haymitch later appears in the original books as the drunken mentor of Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.

The book follows Collins's 2020 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which centred on a young Coriolanus Snow, the future president of Panem. Sunrise on the Reaping explores propaganda, state control and how those in power shape the story told about violence. Its release also set up a film adaptation, which Lionsgate, the studio behind the earlier movies, later moved forward.