OLIVER TWIST

This fiercely comic tale stands in markedcontrast to its genial predecessor, The PickwickPapers . Set against London's seedy backstreet slums, Oliver Twist isthe saga of a workhouse orphan captured and thrustinto a thieves' den, where some of Dickens's mostdepraved villains preside: the incorrigibleArtful Dodger, the murderous bully Sikes, and theterrible Fagin, that treacherous ringleader whosegrinning knavery threatens to send them all to the"ghostly gallows." Yet at the heart of thisdrama