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:
“One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said—the words one didn’t have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one’s dignity or survival.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“With the old kindness, the old distinguished grace,
She lies, her lovely piteous head amid dull red hair
Propped upon pillows, rouge on the pallor of her face.
She would not have us sad because she is lying there,
And when she meets our gaze her eyes are laughter-lit,
Her speech a wicked tale that we may vie with her....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I am no more a witch than you are a wizard. If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink.”
—Sarah Good (?–1692)