Emerald City of Oz

At the beginning of the book, Dorothy Gale (the protagonist of many previous books about the country of Oz) tells her relatives, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry , about their many adventures in the country of Oz. Relatives do not believe Dorothy’s stories and consider her a dreamer, like her late mother, which, however, does not bother Dorothy.

Uncle Henry's affairs are getting worse at this time. He took a loan from the bank on the security of his farm and, if he could not pay off the debt on time, the farm would go to the bank, and Uncle Henry's family would be left homeless. Upon learning about this, Dorothy quickly moved through the Magic Picture to the country of Oz and agreed with Princess Ozma that she herself, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em would permanently move to the country of Oz, where they would live in safety. Soon after, Princess Ozma brings Uncle Henry and Aunt Em to the throne room of her palace in the Emerald City , whose amazement has no end.

Meanwhile, the King of the Dwarves, who rules in the underworld, is preparing an army to capture Oz and enslave its inhabitants. The King appoints the elderly gnome Guf, who declares that no one but him, is able to conquer the country of Oz and offers the King a cunning plan. Since there are a lot of wizards and sorceresses living in Oz, Guf believes that the Dwarf army has no chance of winning a direct attack, so he suggests finding powerful allies first. To this end, he visits three countries: the Land of Speckled Heads, the Country of Drachuns, and the tribe of Fanfazm - evil spirits from the Erb clan, and negotiates an alliance against the country of Oz.

Dorothy with relatives, accompanied by the Wizard of Oz, travels to various parts of the country, meeting with a warm welcome everywhere. During the trip, they meet many inhabitants of the country, which were not mentioned in previous Baum books, in particular:

• living paper dolls created by the immortal Young Cutter;
• ruins, which are made of such small pieces that when someone else appears in their area, they simply crumble;
• living kitchen utensils - the inhabitants of the Kitchen Kingdom;
• live baking - the inhabitants of the Bakery Kingdom;
• rabbits - inhabitants of the Rabbit Kingdom;
• empty hole;
• whiners;
• A zebra that argues with Crab over geography issues.

Along with the above, Dorothy and her companions meet old acquaintances: the Lumberjack and the Scarecrow , as well as the inhabitants of the four Oz countries (Zhevunov, Kvodlingov, Gillikinov and Migunov).

Meanwhile, Princess Ozma, with the help of the Magic Picture, finds out about the dwarfs' cunning plans, but refuses to fight them for humanitarian reasons: “If you need to kill someone to protect my kingdom, I refuse to protect the kingdom!” Then the Scarecrow comes up with a plan on how to defeat an enemy army without bloodshed. To do this, first, with the help of his magic belt, Ozma raises dust in the tunnel along which the army of the gnomes and their allies moves, after which the enemy troops drink water from the Fountain of Oblivion standing in their way and forget all their cunning plans. Then, with the help of a magic belt, Ozma sends the King of the Dwarves and his allies to their countries. And to prevent new incursions into the country of Oz, the kind sorceress Glinda uses a spell that makes the country of Oz invisible and inaccessible to everyone except its inhabitants.

The book “The Emerald City of Oz” contains more material about the social organization of Oz than most previous books, which led to numerous comments about the utopianism of this country ^[3] . The “obviously socialist” economy of Oz contrasts with other fictitious projects of the socialist structure of society, such as Edward Bellamy's “Look Back 2000-1887” and William Morris (1890). Baum’s attitude to the socio-economic system of Oz is unambiguously reflected in the third chapter of the book: “I don’t think that such orders were possible in our world ...” ^[4] .

, author of a series of “revisionist” sequels about the country of Oz - “Wicked” and “Son of a Witch”, noted that the “Emerald City of Oz” is “filled with elegiac quality” and compares the style of the book with the style of “Last Battle” from The Chronicles of Narnia by Clive Lewis ^[5] .

The fountain of Oblivion, which Baum introduces in this book, is mentioned in the following books about the country of Oz, both Baum himself and his literary followers. This fountain plays a special swarm in the books The Magic of Oz (1919), The Forbidden Fountain from Oz (1980), The Wicked Witch of Oz (1993), and The Paradox in Oz (1999).

• The 1986 Japanese anime series The Amazing Wizard of Oz ( Oz no Mahōtsukai ( я ズ の 魔法 使 い ' Ozu no Mahōtsukai' ) ) included, among others, the plot of this book. The series was later reduced to the version available on video and DVD.
• In 1987, Canada produced a Direct-to-video animated film based on the plot of a book ^[6] .

• L.F. Baum . Emerald City of Oz. - M .: Ripol-Classic, 1998 .-- 448 p. - ISBN 5-7905-0245-8 .

• The Emerald City of Oz in the Gutenberg project .
• Audiobook on LibriVox (English)