Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a parallel novel published in 1995 written by Gregory Maguire and illustrated by Douglas Smith. It is a revisionist look at the land and characters of Oz from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, its sequels, and the 1939 film adaption The Wizard of Oz. Unlike the popular 1939 movie and Baum's writings, this novel is not directed at children, and contains adult language and content including violent imagery and sexual situations. It is the first in "The Wicked Years" series, and was followed by Son of a Witch (published in September 2005), A Lion Among Men (published in October 2008), and Out of Oz (published in November 2011). An unabridged audiobook, read by John McDonough, was released in 2000. In 2003, the novel became the basis for the Broadway musical Wicked. The novel presents events, characters and situations from Baum's books and the film in new ways, with many differences between the series and th...