Gregory Maguire

Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, the Oz reimaginings — fairy-tale and Oz retellings from the writer who taught the genre how to do it.

Gregory Maguire's Wicked (1995) retold The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the witch's perspective and launched one of modern literary fantasy's defining retelling projects. The Wicked Years (Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, Out of Oz) plus the Another Day sequel sequence extend the Oz reimagining. His Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (Cinderella retelling), Mirror Mirror (Snow White), and other fairy-tale work define a literary-fantasy register the genre needed. The prose is precise and literary; the moral universe is uncomfortable on purpose.

For adult readers. Content includes sexual content (present and substantial), violence, and dark thematic material handled with literary seriousness — these aren't comforting retellings. The reading experience is the pleasure of fairy-tale fantasy that argues seriously with the source material. Pick this shelf when you want fairy-tale retellings with literary ambition, Oz reimagining at its most accomplished, and prose worth rereading.