Wicked
the bestselling book that inspired the movie
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3.9 • 39 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
**Elphie, the spellbinding prequel to Wicked, is out now**
The global bestseller that inspired the hit musical phenomenon.
Now a major movie and record-breaking box office sensation.
💚 💗
In this classic tale of good and evil, what if we weren't told the whole story?
Long before Dorothy follows the yellow brick road and triumphs over the Wicked Witch of the West, a little girl with emerald-green skin is born in the land of Oz.
Elphaba grows up to be smart and prickly, a lonely outsider with an extraordinary talent for magic. Arriving at university, she dares to believe she might finally fit in.
But Oz isn't the haven she'd dreamed of. Some of its citizens are in grave danger, and Elphaba is determined to protect them from the Wizard's power.
And when the world declares her a wicked witch, Elphaba takes matters into her own hands...
This is the original novel by Gregory Maguire, first published in 1995. It is a reimagined prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and contains adult content.
🌟 Fall under the WICKED spell this year 🌟
'One of my absolute favourite books! A completely different take on the classic'
'Kept me on the edge of my seat from the second I picked it up'
'I have a penchant for fairytale retellings that are a bit dark and misunderstood villains and this ticked all my boxes'
'This is a real Oz, it makes you believe in it'
'A real joy to sink into a very different world'
'You see the Wicked Witch and Dorothy in a whole new light'
'Funny, sad and unputdownable'
'Honestly, it's better than The Wizard of Oz!'
'Wonderfully written, witty and thought provoking'
'A favourite of mine for many many years'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Born with green skin and huge teeth, like a dragon, the free-spirited Elphaba grows up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, then a nurse who tends the dying--and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Maguire's strange and imaginative postmodernist fable uses L. Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a springboard to create a tense realm inhabited by humans, talking animals (a rhino librarian, a goat physician), Munchkinlanders, dwarves and various tribes. The Wizard of Oz, emperor of this dystopian dictatorship, promotes Industrial Modern architecture and restricts animals' right to freedom of travel; his holy book is an ancient manuscript of magic that was clairvoyantly located by Madam Blavatsky 40 years earlier. Much of the narrative concerns Elphaba's troubled youth (she is raised by a giddy alcoholic mother and a hermitlike minister father who transmits to her his habits of loathing and self-hatred) and with her student years. Dorothy appears only near novel's end, as her house crash-lands on Elphaba's sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in an accident that sets Elphaba on the trail of the girl from Kansas--as well as the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion--and her fabulous new shoes. Maguire combines puckish humor and bracing pessimism in this fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will, which should, despite being far removed in spirit from the Baum books, captivate devotees of fantasy. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; first serial to Word; author tour.
