Libri di Gregory Maguire migliori da leggere e consigliati

Elfaba, la Perfida Strega dell’Ovest: «Per definizione, il male si nasconde.» Glinda: «Sono ricca sfondata, l’avresti mai detto? Chi immaginava che la beneficenza fosse così redditizia?» Principessa Elefantessa Nastoya: «Quando ci troviamo di fronte a un bivio, quando l’aria puzza di tragedia, a rimetterci sono coloro che non indossano una maschera.» Il Mago di Oz: «Il punto, mia verde fanciulla, è che non tocca a una giovane, né a una studentessa, né a una cittadina decidere ciò che è giusto e ingiusto. È compito dei capi.» Dottor Dillamond: «Cosa pensate che intendesse Madame Morribile concludendo il secondo Quell con l’epigramma ‘Animali, abbassate la cresta’!» Madame Morribile: «Con il passare del tempo e una cornice abbastanza ampia, tutto ciò che possiamo dire o fare finisce per rivelarsi ironico.» Fiyero, principe degli Arjiki di Kiamo Ko: «Cosa credi di sapere della perfidia?»

This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire’s breathtaking New York Times bestseller Wicked views the land of Oz, its inhabitants, its Wizard, and the Emerald City, through a darker and greener (not rosier) lens. Brilliantly inventive, Wicked offers us a radical new evaluation of one of the most feared and hated characters in all of literature: the much maligned Wicked Witch of the West who, as Maguire tells us, wasn’t nearly as Wicked as we imagined.

The marvellous land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And look who’s knocking at the door. It’s none other than Dorothy. Yes, that Dorothy. Amid all this chaos, Elphaba’s granddaughter, the tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch, has come of age. Now, Rain will take up her broom in an Oz wracked by war. Out of Oz is a magical journey rife with revelations and reversals, reprisals and surprises – the hallmarks of the brilliant and unique imagination of Gregory Maguire.

Back in the land of Oz, the adolescent boy Liir was last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle after Dorothy did in the Witch. Bruised, comatose, and left for dead, Liir is tended to at the Cloister of Saint Glinda by a silent novice called Candle, who wills him back to life with her musical gifts. What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba’s son? He has her broom and her cape – but what of her powers? In an Oz that, since the Wizard’s departure, is under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enought to grow up?

After Alice by Gregory Maguire, the bestselling author of WICKED, is a wonderful retelling of what happened next after Alice disappeared down the rabbit hole. An entertaining spin on Lewis Caroll’s classic tale of Alice in Wonderland, this novel will delight fans of Angela Carter. When Alice fell down the rabbit-hole, she found Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But how did Victorian Oxford react to Alice’s disappearance? Gregory Maguire turns his imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings -and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll’s enduring tale. Ada, a friend mentioned briefly in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, sets out to visit Alice but, arriving a moment too late, tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself. Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and bring her safely home from this surreal world below the world. The White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and the bloodthirsty Queen of Hearts interrupt their mad tea party to suggest a conundrum: if Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or if Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is After Alice.