We're hardly the first people to note the similarities between Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, and the recent bestselling Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. We were pleased to read an interview with the normally reticent Collins in today's New York Times, which discusses the issue:

Even more pronounced are the similarities between “The Hunger Games” and “Battle Royale,” a Japanese novel published in 1999. Each book involves young people selected at random and pitted against one another in a game of survival staged by tyrannical authorities. The parallels are striking enough that Collins’s work has been savaged on the blogosphere as a baldfaced ripoff. The authors share an interest in the mechanisms of state control, but their agendas clearly diverge. “Battle Royale” is a more deliberate study of adolescence, its coming-of-age savageries and posturings. “You’ve become quite a stud,” a dying girl tells the classmate who cradles her in his arms. When it was published, “Battle Royale” played into Japan’s fears about a rise in youth violence; Collins’s heroes are, if anything, models of responsibility. When I asked Collins if she had drawn from “Battle Royale,” she was unperturbed. “I had never heard of that book or that author until my book was turned in. At that point, it was mentioned to me, and I asked my editor if I should read it. He said: ‘No, I don’t want that world in your head. Just continue with what you’re doing.’ ” She has yet to read the book or to see the movie.


Ooh, someone at the Times read Battle Royale! The article is pretty interesting; apparently the upcoming Hunger Games film "will be safe for viewers as young as 12"...unlike the Battle Royale film. I wonder though...should I send Ms. Collins a free copy of the novel? Surely she can read it now!