Lord of the Flies. Before The Hunger Games, there was William Golding's 1954 Lord of the Flies.
Well, okay, before there was The Hunger Games, there was reality TV and the 1996 Japanese novel (and later move) Battle Royale. But you have to admit, the premise is similar: a bunch of kids end up on an island/ arena and turn into vicious savages in about, oh, five minutes. Just like The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies was a great success—although we're not convinced that Suzanne Collins is going to follow in William Golding's steps by winning a Nobel Prize for Literature for "illuminat[ing] the human condition of the world today.
" (Love ya, Suze.) Lord of the Flies Characters and Conflicts. Lord of the Flies.