Hiddensee was published by William Morrow in 2017, and it applies Maguire’s revisionist imagination to the Nutcracker — specifically to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original dark fairy tale “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (1816) rather than to the sanitized Tchaikovsky ballet version.
The novel follows Dirr, a boy of mysterious origins found in the forests of Germany, who grows into a man of strange gifts — a woodcarver whose creations seem alive, a wanderer who appears and disappears from people’s lives, a figure who may be human or may be something else entirely. The narrative traces his life from childhood through the creation of the wooden nutcracker that he gives to the Stahlbaum family — the gift that will trigger the events of Hoffmann’s story.
Maguire is interested in the question of where enchantment comes from: what kind of person creates an object that seems to contain magic? Dirr is not a wizard — he is a craftsman, an observer, a man attuned to the strangeness that exists at the edges of ordinary life. The novel suggests that the “magic” of fairy tales is not supernatural but perceptual: it is the ability to see the world as it is — strange, beautiful, and terrible — rather than as convention teaches us to see it.
Collecting Hiddensee
First edition (William Morrow, New York, 2017): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$20
- Signed copies: $20–$40