The story is simple.  Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games, but in doing so has angered the Capitol.  An act of sacrifice laid bare the scheme, exposing the tyranny for what it was.  The Capitol must have its revenge.  Defiance does not go un-noticed or un-punished.  But the Capitol also has a problem – Katniss’s act of courage has lit a tinder box which threatens the Capitol’s tenuous stranglehold on the districts.  They cannot afford to make Katniss a martyr.  They devise a plan to bring her personal narrative back into their control.  Will they succeed? 

My takeaway from this book was summarized in one line.  During a discussion with Coriolanis Snow, the President, who is trying to explain to her the danger she is in if she does not submit, Katniss quietly says “It (the Capitol) must be very weak, if a handful of berries can bring it down…”  Totalitarian regimes are wholly dependent upon their subjects meekly playing their part.  From the endless elections in Venezuela where the outcome is never in doubt; to the bizarre mourning at the passing of a North Korean tyrant; the carefully crafted pantomime and pageantry of authority must have its actors.  This is why free societies are so resilient and dictatorships so fragile – despotism often cannot survive an individual act of defiance; how could they possibly retain control when millions of people behave as their hearts guide?

Read this book – whether in Morocco or at your kitchen table, you will be carried away.