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
Famous quotes containing the words life, times, wicked and/or witch:
“In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.”
—Oswald Spengler (1880–1936)
“For one who lived among enemies so long:
If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“A witch is one who worketh by the Devil or by some curious art either healing or revealing things secret, or foretelling things to come which the Devil hath devised to ensnare men’s souls withal unto damnation. The conjurer, the enchanter, the sorcerer, the diviner, and whatever other sort there is encompassed within this circle.”
—George Gifford (16th century)