Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a parallel novel published in 1995 written by Gregory Maguire and illustrated by Douglas Smith. It is a revisionist look at the land and characters of Oz from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, its sequels, and the 1939 film adaption The Wizard of Oz. Unlike the popular 1939 movie and Baum's writings, this novel is not directed at children, and contains adult language and content including violent imagery and sexual situations.
It is the first in "The Wicked Years" series, and was followed by Son of a Witch (published in September 2005), A Lion Among Men (published in October 2008), and Out of Oz (published in November 2011).
An unabridged audiobook, read by John McDonough, was released in 2000. In 2003, the novel became the basis for the Broadway musical Wicked.
The novel presents events, characters and situations from Baum's books and the film in new ways, with many differences between the series and the Wicked Years. The social strife described in the Wicked Years indicates that the two series are set in similar and internally consistent but distinctly separate visions of Oz. It also sets the reader thinking about what it really is to be "Wicked", and whether good intentions with bad results are the same as bad intentions with bad results.
Read more about Wicked: The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West: Plot Summary, Characters, Objects, Adaptations
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“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“I do not think I will ever become deadened, because I live in other people’s lives, I must admit there are times when it weighs me down because I can’t do some of the things I want.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“The wicked envy and hate; it is their way of admiring.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead.”
—E.Y. Harburg (1898–1981)