Sunrise on the Reaping

Suzanne Collins

Book 0.5 of The Hunger Games

This prequel to The Hunger Games follows a teenage Haymitch Abernathy as he's thrust into the fiftieth Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, where twice the usual number of tributes are reaped. Told in Haymitch's first-person voice, it traces how a defiant, hopeful young man from District 12 is shaped by loss, propaganda, and survival into the bitter mentor Katniss later knows. The novel weaves in familiar faces from the wider series while exploring themes of media manipulation and resistance under an authoritarian regime.