Wicked

The #1 New York Times bestseller and basis for the smash hit musical and two major motion pictures. Look for part one of WICKED the movie, now streaming, and the stunning conclusion WICKED: FOR GOOD

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 work of classic fantasy literature to revisit for years to come. This iconic Oz retelling 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. 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, the origin story of another little girl begins. 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 in this Oz of deep moral ambiguity, Elphaba’s world 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, this revisionist fairy tale 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.

"Maguire did something truly remarkable with this novel, in managing to inhabit, enlarge, deepen and find new dimensions in a world that had been invented by another writer, and in doing so make something entirely new. It’s an astonishing achievement." ―Phillip Pullman

"Gregory gets the complications and uniqueness of women very well."― Kristen Chenoweth

Gregory Maguire is the bestselling author Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. With its three sequels, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz, the quartet is known as the Wicked Years. It was followed up by a trilogy called Another Day (The Brides of Maracoor, The Oracle of Maracoor, and The Witch of Maracoor), which continues the saga begun in Wicked. These books have have earned him rave reviews and a dedicated following.

The Broadway musical based on Wicked is now the fourth longest running play in Broadway history. The play has inspired a two-film project being released in 2024 and 2025, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

Maguire has written ten other adult novels and twenty children's novels. He received his doctorate in English Literature from Tufts University, and has taught at Simmons College and other Boston area colleges.

He has also served as an artist-in-residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Having lived in Dublin and London, Maguire now makes his home in New England and in France with his husband, the painter Andy Newman, and several of their adopted children.