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How long does it take to read The Hunger Games?

Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins takes about 7 hours 16 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 1 of The Hunger Games

Next: Catching Fire

About 7 hours 16 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2008. 396 pages, about 108,900 words. Written for children.

15 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 6 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 16 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 32 minutes

The page count is the median across 143 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle royale to the death. The book received critical acclaim from major reviewers and authors. It was praised for its plot and character development. In writing The Hunger Games, Collins drew upon Greek mythology, Roman gladiatorial games, and contemporary reality television for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008. The Hunger Games was first published in hardcover on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, featuring a cover designed by Tim O'Brien.

Content warnings (AI-checked, may be incomplete)
  • violence
  • death of a child

How these are chosen

Subjects: severe poverty, starvation, oppression, effects of war, self-sacrifice, Science fiction

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