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Used
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Trade Paperback
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9780063398344
Overview
Overview
The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony Award-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.
With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire's Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination.
Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin--no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz's most promising young citizens.
But Elphaba's Oz is no utopia. The Wizard's secret police are everywhere. Animals--those creatures with voices, souls, and minds--are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals--even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.
Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name--one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel's distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire's Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Maguire, Gregory
- ISBN: 9780063398344
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.00
- Number Of Pages: 432
- Publication Year: 2024
Language:
English
Customer Reviews
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My favorite book
Arlandra J. - 6 years 1 month agoIncredible, read several times over the last 10 years
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There are TWO Sides to Every Story!!
Stephanie H. - 6 years 4 months agoLet me start off saying that, I got this book expecting it to be tied more closely to the "movie" we all know. The "movie" that we have all come to love. Instead, it turned out to be a well thought out and complex story, following the Wicked Witch of the West, from birth to death. Gregory Maguire reinvents Oz like you've never imagined it. Wicked actually flips Oz on its head, and makes you think that it could have happened - like it is almost a soap opera. It has everything: Love, betrayal, jealousy, friendship, racism, politics, and sex..."Oh-My!!" The idea of the book is that the Wicked Witch of the West was not really "wicked", just misunderstood. She tries to live a quiet life with herself and never has that opportunity. I found myself grudgingly rooting for Witch, after all, she is just misunderstood, right?! Maybe?! The moral of the story is that there are two sides to every story, and if you look at things from another perspective, sometimes those we judge to be bad or evil, really are just people with different goals from our own.... OR maybe she just wanted the pretty shoes! I mean, what girl doesn't want pretty shoes!
HPB Staff Review