Hunger Games: the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

In the Capitol it is the morning of the tenth reaping of the Hunger Games. The young Coriolanus Snow, mentor of the Games, knows well that bringing his tribute to victory is his one chance to redeem the name of his family and achieve glory. The road is anything but smooth: he will be entrusted with a woman, and from district 12 – the weakest – into the bargain. In the arena, the young people fight to the death, while outside the games Coriolanus begins to feel something towards his tribute. The choice between following the rules and the desire to survive, no matter the cost, will be increasingly complex. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Ballata dell'usignolo e del serpente in Italian) is a raw, three-part narrative (before, during and after the Hunger Games) that explores the subtle and ambiguous difference between good and evil, maturity and immaturity, ethics and immorality, love and opportunism. Through the gaze of the future, dictatorial, President of Panem, the reader is accompanied through his three-month rise to power. It’s a rise that’s anything but predictable or simple, which passes through a constant conflict between right and wrong choices, ethics sacrificed and the ego’s abuse of other people’s lives. As in the original trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes too is an analysis of human nature in the form of a novel, especially of its most ambiguous characteristic: the tendency towards manipulation.

Hunger Games. Ballata dell'usignolo e del serpente
by Suzanne Collins
Mondadori