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The Complete Maus

(Maus #1-2)

Art Spiegelman

4.53 · Rating details · 151,542 ratings · 8,554 reviews

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the ...more

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Paperback, 296 pages

Published October 2nd 2003 by Penguin Books (first published 1994)

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Nov 05, 2011 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2012, favorites, graphic-novel-comic, feels, best-of-2012

oh my god.

description

This burrowed it's way deep into my heart. This made me feel so much. This was an experience, not just a "read". This was real and I can't even explain how this affected me because it was the most emotional thing I've ever read. Not made-up emotion. This was REAL and it affected me.

Vladek. He reminded me of my Grandfather, a little. I loved my Grandfather and I loved Vladek. His story, as told to his son Art Spiegelman, was one of the most powerful stories I've ever experienced.

This w ...more

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Aug 05, 2014 Alejandro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, politics, comic-book, holocaust, religion, biography, military

Wonderful example of the power of a graphic novel!

This is the “Complete” edition of “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” collecting both parts: “My Father Bleeds History” and “And Here My Troubles Began”.

OF MAUS AND MEN

But these damn bugs are eating me alive!

While it took long time of finally reading Maus,...

...I knew that it was a graphic novel referring about the Jew Holocaust, but using mice (Jews) and cats (Nazis) as the characters,...

...and even while I was sure that it will be a crude tel ...more

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Jan 17, 2014 Leonard Gaya rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

The young Adolf Hitler applied twice for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and each time was rejected. One may dream: had he been successful, he might have had a different fate, and, as a result, Europe’s history might have taken some other shape… Sixty years later, on another continent, the young Art Spiegelman applied to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and passed the exam. His parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, were two Jews from Poland who survived through the The young Adolf Hitler applied twice for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and each time was rejected. One may dream: had he been successful, he might have had a different fate, and, as a result, Europe’s history might have taken some other shape… Sixty years later, on another continent, the young Art Spiegelman applied to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and passed the exam. His parents, Vladek and Anja Spiegelman, were two Jews from Poland who survived through the Nazi ghetto of Sosnowiec and the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Maus, a massive graphic novel, thirteen years in the making, depicts the complicated relationship between Art and his father, the very process of creating Maus, and, in an interlocked way, Vladek’s experience, living in Poland during the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

Back in those days, Hollywood was producing its most celebrated films, and Mickey Mouse had become the cutest little mascot on the silver screen. At that very moment, the Allied troops carried movie cameras into the concentration camps. The films that remain from that time —the ones that were shown during the Nuremberg trial— are tough to watch, haunting, almost impossible to put into words. Art Spiegelman has managed to blend both pictures (Disney and the Red Army file footage) poetically, through flat, condensed and straightforward drawings. His old father, a bit soft in the head and speaking in a funny broken English, provides a deeply personal, honest, at times slightly Kafkaesque or Chaplinesque account of these dreadful years, of that constant fear and deprivation, so that we could make some sense of this inhuman, world-changing experience.

There’s a quote by Samuel Beckett somewhere in this book: “Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness”. This visual masterpiece is a refutation of this sentence. And it has left me both moved and dumbfounded.

Edit: Just watched Roman Polanski's film The Pianist, based on the harrowing experience of concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman during the war, in Warsaw Ghetto. Both Maus and Polanski's movie share this sense of gradually rising horror and convey the same utter stupefaction. A must-see. ...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Steve rated it it was amazing

It didn’t dawn on me until later that this brilliant piece of graphic artistry and fiction is actually a very clever allegory. On the face of it, we’re led to believe that it’s a story of the terrible suffering perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews in Poland and throughout Europe. But if you scratch beneath the surface, I think you’ll find that this particular holocaust story was made to symbolize something more pervasive and endemic. I speak of the horrific violence that persists to this da ...more

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Aug 07, 2016 F rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2016, historical-fiction, non-fiction, graphic-novel-comic, germany-poland

LOVE

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Jul 11, 2016 Fabian {Councillor} rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, collections-and-editions, year-1986

Until just a few weeks ago, the only reason for why I read graphic novels now and then was because of people's constant recommendations about the beauty and the value of those kinds of books. I will be honest; I am guilty of never believing those words. Most likely did I read graphic novels which didn't suit my personal tastes, but Art Spiegelman was capable of shattering my expectations and completely stunning me with the art of his writing and his illustrations.

But let's start at the beginning Until just a few weeks ago, the only reason for why I read graphic novels now and then was because of people's constant recommendations about the beauty and the value of those kinds of books. I will be honest; I am guilty of never believing those words. Most likely did I read graphic novels which didn't suit my personal tastes, but Art Spiegelman was capable of shattering my expectations and completely stunning me with the art of his writing and his illustrations.

But let's start at the beginning. Maus is a collection of two graphic novels with autobiographical background about the author, Art Spiegelman, and his father's recollections about his experiences in the Second World War. Spiegelman constantly switches between present and past, between the time when he writes down what his father tells him and the time when all the horrible events in the concentration camps took place. But he doesn't only include information about his father Vladek Spiegelman's tale of survival; the personal and very conflicted relationship between Art and Vladek also turns out to be a central part of the story, including controversy about Vladek's second wife and Art's personal approach to the success he had as an author when the first installment in his series of graphic novels was published.

Obviously, memoirs or autobiographies always include potential to let their author shine in a bright light, to let them appear heroic and exemplary. You have to rely on what the author tells you about himself and the people surrounding him, on which layers of his own character he presents. Art Spiegelman did so in a very convincing way, pointing out not only the horrible crimes which were committed during the Nazi period, but also the flaws he and his father had themselves, as human beings with all their faults and mistakes. Art and his father appear in such a realistic way that you can't help but care for them; something which never happened to me before in a book with autobiographical content. Of course, some parts of the novels were shocking, which you need to expect before reading something about such an important subject. Feelings of despair and fear overshadowed Vladek Spiegelman's recollections of his experiences during the Second World War, from his family's decline and his marriage to his transport to Auschwitz.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about those graphic novels is the way Art Spiegelman used animal heads in the place of recognizable human ones. The completely black-and-white illustrations vividly underline the feelings Spiegelman wanted to express with his books. And still now, almost two months after finishing them, am I stunned.

Do I need to mention that I'd recommend these graphic novels to everyone? ...more

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May 24, 2018 Matthew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library, 2018, graphic-novel, biography, book-a-book-club

Maus was more than I expected. I knew it would be about World War II and the Holocaust with the charaters being anthropomorphic mice, cats, pigs, dogs, etc. What I didn't realize was it would expand even farther in to the specific lives of the Spiegelmans before, during, and after the war.

Throughout the book the artist/author is a featured character struggling with his curmudgeonly father while he tries to document the story of his father's time in 1930s and 40s Poland and Germany. His experienc ...more

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Aug 08, 2019 Hamad rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019-reads, e-books, manga-picture-books

This Review ✍️ Blog 📖 Twitter 🐦 Instagram 📷

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars

💉 This cover has been on my radar for a looooong time and it usually is on the most bought books in my country when I check the online bookstores. I am not a fan of history and so I avoided it for the longest time possible. A book I was reading did mention that it was a graphic novel about Jew people and what they went through and I became interested and found myself a copy!

💉 I like what the author did, he is very smart, Jew peop ...more

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Apr 02, 2018 Svetlana rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic-novels, favourites, war, completed-series

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.”
- Adolf Hitler

This a graphic novel told from two timelines. In the narrative present, Art Spiegelman (author) is interviewing his father Vladek about his experiences as a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor. The narrative past depicts these very experiences from the mid 1930s to the end of the Holocaust in 1945. Spiegelman has utilised different species of animals to portray different nationalities and races - Jews as mice, Germans a ...more

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Feb 02, 2014 LeeAnne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: holocaust-history, wwii, essential-holocaust-study, graphic-books, memoirs-bios, auschwitz, fav-non-fic, holocaust-testimonies, survivor, antisemitism

The Complete Maus
Art Spiegelman

Probably the most informative and intimate journal of the holocaust I have ever read.

Maus is really two parallel stories, not one. It jumps back and forth between the two stories, one set in the past (Poland), the other set in the present (NYC).

Story 1: 1940’s Poland: Vladek Spiegelman tells how he survived the holocaust as a Polish-Jew. From the invasion, to the spread of Naziam, to his time in Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp as a tin worker at the gas cha ...more

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Apr 19, 2019 Rachel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, war, favorites, i-actually-cried, graphic-novels

I feel like anything I could say about this book is going to sound woefully inadequate, but I guess I'll give it a shot anyway. Maus had obviously been on my radar for ages as a critical piece of Holocaust literature as well as being the only graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer Prize, so I was certainly expecting it to be good, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for how utterly harrowing of a read this ended up being. And again, yes, I did know that its subject matter was the H I feel like anything I could say about this book is going to sound woefully inadequate, but I guess I'll give it a shot anyway. Maus had obviously been on my radar for ages as a critical piece of Holocaust literature as well as being the only graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer Prize, so I was certainly expecting it to be good, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for how utterly harrowing of a read this ended up being. And again, yes, I did know that its subject matter was the Holocaust, but I also knew that Spiegelman made the famous stylistic decision to depict Jews as mice and Nazis as cats in this book, so I guess I was expecting something altogether more abstract? Instead it's a rather literal depiction of Spiegelman's father's experiences throughout WWII, culminating in his release from Auschwitz in 1945.

There's also an added dimension where Spiegelman chooses to depict the scenes in which he interviewed his father and came to hear these stories. In this present-day timeline we learn about Spiegelman's complex relationship with his father, and all the tension and resentment that's built up between them through the years, often due to the fact that his father's life was shaped so significantly by this atrocious thing that Spiegelman struggles to make sense of, as he was born after the end of the war. Spiegelman also lost his mother to suicide decades earlier, a tragic event from which his father had never fully recovered, though he did go on to remarry. In one particularly devastating panel, Spiegelman laments to his wife that he wishes he could have been in Auschwitz with his parents so he could understand what they had to go through, so he could bridge that gap between generations. That's this book in a nutshell: raw, unfiltered, uncompromising. It takes a strong stomach to get through this, and I think I spent the better part of it in tears, but if you're able to read this, I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is the best graphic novel I've read, the best piece of Holocaust literature that I've read, and strangely enough, the best love story that I've read. The final panel shattered me. ...more

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Sep 13, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novels, favorites, pop-culture, war, nazi-germany, classics

One of the most influential literary works ever...in or out of comics.

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Jul 05, 2017 Eimhear (A Little Haze) rated it really liked it

Recommended to Eimhear (A Little Haze) by: Amanda Skoog

Shelves: challenge-6wks-summer, non-fiction, read2017, adult-fiction, cried-me-a-river, historical-fiction, 4stars, reviewed

I never knew that a graphic novel could be so moving, so haunting and so phenomenally powerful.

The complete Maus tells the tale of Hitler's Europe and the experiences of one Jewish man, the author/illustrator Art Spiegelman's father Vladek. It is a book that doesn't hold any punches and is jaw dropping in its exploration of humanity through both the atrocities and ethnic cleansing of that time and of how this moulds a man forever.

I don't have the words to fully express all I'm feeling right no ...more

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Dec 09, 2010 Kat Kennedy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kat-s-book-reviews, i-learned-something-new, leaves-awesomeness-behind

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jan 19, 2015 Leah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

THE COMPLETE MAUS is, to date, the hardest, most emotionally draining novel I have read in my adult life. It was a heart-wrenching, but really necessary read for me, and I’m proud of myself for deciding to read something so far outside my comfort zone (I tend to shy away from both history and memoir/true story novels).

The book is a story within a story. Art shows himself interviewing his father, Vladek, and his time spent with his father for part of this book, and the rest of the story is Vladek THE COMPLETE MAUS is, to date, the hardest, most emotionally draining novel I have read in my adult life. It was a heart-wrenching, but really necessary read for me, and I’m proud of myself for deciding to read something so far outside my comfort zone (I tend to shy away from both history and memoir/true story novels).

The book is a story within a story. Art shows himself interviewing his father, Vladek, and his time spent with his father for part of this book, and the rest of the story is Vladek's experiences and survival of Auschwitz and how he survived throughout all of the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Nazis. Both sides shown in this felt completely honest and real.

The art, while definitely not my favorite style, worked incredibly well for this story. There were times where it was just the art in panels, and I really felt like those were some of the stronger panels. The art was black and white, thick lines, and just overall felt really heavy. Most of the time, the panels felt really cramped, but I have a feeling this was intentional.

I absolutely loved Art Spiegelman’s decision to depict the different people within this story as animals (Mice=the Jewish people, Pigs=the Polish people, and Cats=the Germans/Nazis).

Also intentional, and something I really appreciated, was how honest and true to Vladek’s narration Art Spiegelman seemed to stay. In the book, you find out that Art recorded his father’s story, and I think he wrote Vladek’s words verbatim. There were times where the sentence structures were just a little off, and I could hear Vladek's voice so strongly during those times. It just really added another depth to this book.

I wasn’t able to read this in one sitting and I also wasn’t able to pick up another book while taking a break from THE COMPLETE MAUS. But I’m really OK with that. I was able to really digest and contemplate on what I was reading, and I think taking my time helped me understand and fully immerse myself in Vladek’s experiences.

If you decide to read this, just know that it didn’t seem like Vladek held back telling Art anything that he experienced. All the pain and loss that he went through at the hands of the Nazis was extremely haunting to read about.

Vladek’s story will definitely stick with me for the rest of my life. ...more

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Dec 22, 2014 Bettie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: spring-2015, e-book, nonfiction, jewish, biography, art-forms, holocaust-genocide, published-1991

Art Spiegelman warns of 'dangerous' outcome as Russian shops ban Maus

This has been on my wishlist forever -looks like this is a good time to read it.

"My father pulled out 14 of his teeth to escape. If you missed 12 teeth they let you go."
- page 45, book I

"The guards, it was Jews with big sticks, they acted so, just like the Germans"
- page 106, book I

...more

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Mar 20, 2021 Lea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, history-historical-fiction, non-fiction, owned, graphic-novels-comics

Such a creative and innovative way to write a memoir. Loved the animal metaphor with mice and cats but evermore I adored the writer's honesty about his father's personality and its effects on his mental health. Even though his father was a Holocaust survivor, even before such trauma it is very likely he had what we call personality disorder, and the graphic novel does the raw unpacking of emotional pressure that Spiegelman grew up with having the kind a father he had; rigid, adamant, neurotic, d ...more

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Sep 19, 2016 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: holocaust, family-memoirs, graphic-novels, newbury-library

“To die, it’s easy…but you have to struggle for life!” The only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize, this brings the Holocaust home in a fresh way. Like Animal Farm, it uses the conceit of various animal associations: the Jews are mice, Poles are pigs, Nazis are cats, and Americans are dogs. Spiegelman draws what, from a distance of decades, his Polish father Vladek narrates about his almost unbelievable series of escapes, including time in Auschwitz. It’s often the minor stories that really “To die, it’s easy…but you have to struggle for life!” The only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize, this brings the Holocaust home in a fresh way. Like Animal Farm, it uses the conceit of various animal associations: the Jews are mice, Poles are pigs, Nazis are cats, and Americans are dogs. Spiegelman draws what, from a distance of decades, his Polish father Vladek narrates about his almost unbelievable series of escapes, including time in Auschwitz. It’s often the minor stories that really bring the atmosphere of deprivation to life: getting sick in the ghetto from a cake made of scrounged ‘flour’, some of it actually soap powder; bartering with a Polish guard to give his friend a uniform that fits properly; keeping a spare lice-free uniform shirt carefully wrapped up to present at inspection times. “It’s a miracle he survived,” Spiegelman thinks of his father: some combination of good luck and cunning.

Spiegelman gives the book an extra dimension by including his recording sessions with his father as a framing story for most chapters. On visits to his father and his second wife out in Rego Park, when he can get a word in edgewise over the couple’s bickering and his father’s complaints about his health and finances, he elicits Vladek’s memories. The narration is thus in Vladek’s own broken English, and we see how exasperating Spiegelman finds him – for being a penny pincher and racist against blacks, for instance – even as he’s in awe of his story. “No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz,” he tells his shrink.

The drawing style is fairly simplistic. It’s interesting to take as a counterpoint the four-page comic “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” (included in this volume) that Spiegelman wrote before any of the installments of Maus came out. From 1972, it’s about his release from a mental hospital and his mother Anja’s suicide – family tragedies that don’t get much space in a book already overloaded with sadness and loss. I prefer the style of these panels – ornate with cross-hatching, almost like woodcuts – yet it’s clear why, to get through the sheer mass of material, Spiegelman had to streamline things to accomplish Maus.

You can see how this paved the way for comic artists like Roz Chast and Alison Bechdel. Their works share the same psychological depth when the artist is examining his/her relationship with parents. I’d recommend this to absolutely anyone, graphic novel fan or no. As Vladek’s second wife Mala observes, “It’s an important book. People who don’t usually read such stories will be interested.” (Vladek pipes up: “Yes. I don’t read ever such comics, and even I am interested.” Mala: “Of course you are interested. It’s your story!” / Vladek: “Yes. I know already my story by heart, and even I am interested.”) ...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Michelle rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everybody

Shelves: non-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Pre-review:

OhmygodOhmygodOhmygodOhmygod! I'm cheating on J.M. Coetzee with Art Spiegelman. Actually, I'm not just cheating on him; I've left him.

Review:

Before I review this book, you should know something about me: I never read graphic novels. I normally have zero interest in reading graphic novels/comic books. Are those the same thing, by the way? I have no idea. That’s how little I’m interested in them.

Anyway, Maus was one of the best things I’ve read in a long, long time! If you haven’t read ...more

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Jun 02, 2010 Praj rated it it was amazing

Shelves: manga-graphic-manhwa

Where should I commence to appraise this book? Must I begin from the detail that MAUS is a gratifying story of Vladek and Art OR that it is a sheer enlightenment through simplicity?

Art Spiegelman in this astounding graphic novel reveals a fractured father-son relationship whilst focusing on the perils of the Holocaust. The story is set in Rego Park, NY where Art Spiegelman, a cartoonist tries to verbalize and grasp with his father and the Holocaust.

Written over a period of thirteen years, MAUS Where should I commence to appraise this book? Must I begin from the detail that MAUS is a gratifying story of Vladek and Art OR that it is a sheer enlightenment through simplicity?

Art Spiegelman in this astounding graphic novel reveals a fractured father-son relationship whilst focusing on the perils of the Holocaust. The story is set in Rego Park, NY where Art Spiegelman, a cartoonist tries to verbalize and grasp with his father and the Holocaust.

Written over a period of thirteen years, MAUS comprises of two volumes.

Volume I:-My Father Bleeds History:- The narrative initiates in the town of Czestochowa in Poland; native soil of Vladek Spiegelman(Art’s father).Young and vivacious Vladek is into the textile business who after having a torrid affair with Lucia ends up marrying a much wealthier Anja Zylberberg. Over the years Vladek is drafted into the Polish army where he endures severe anguish as a prisoner of war, captured by the Nazis. After his release when he heads back home to see his infant son Richieu, the family is forced into hiding as the Nazis started to hound the Jews.
Volume II:-And Here My troubles Begin:- Encompasses Vladek’s experiences in Auschwitz and his familiarities with Anja’s existence in the neighboring camp,Birkenau. Finally, the prisoners are freed leading to the collapse of the Germans; however Vladek undergoes a tedious journey to Sosnowiec to be reunited with Anja.

The plot shifts back and forth from illustrating Vladek’s saga to the present day when he is trying to put in picture the chronicles for his son Art. The current events reveal Vladek’s tryst with medical disabilities and his heart-wrenching yearning to bond with his only son during his twilight years.

Art,the only surviving child of Vladek could never comprehend with his father’s suffrage and melancholic state. “I mean,I can’t even make any sense out of my relationship with my father…How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz?...Of the Holocaust?”
Art’s effort to identify with his father’s life is delineated throughout the novel when he questions Vladek on Anja’s suicide or life in the concentration camps. Vladek on the other hand, still relives the horror of the Holocaust in his trivial arguments with Mala or his reminiscing of the war. It is justly said that to understand another’s horror one has to relive it. Maybe Art being raised in New York, could not identify with Vladek’s pain of losing Richieu, Anja and Auschwitz. He tried to find a “normal” father in Vladek; blaming Vladek for all the chaos in his life.

The characterization of the Jews as “Mice” and the Nazis as “Cats” is accurately symbolic as the venomous predators and eternal nemesis. The depiction of these characters in various graphical sketches fetches emotions of factual individuals bringing a huge lump in your throat; especially when Art feels guilty of blaming his father for his mother’s suicide. The pain in Art’s words in failing to build affection towards his father makes you hypothesize about the numerous Holocaust survivors and their struggle to bond with their children. A victim of any kind faces a genuine struggle to find acceptance and understanding in the aftermath life. Similarly, Vladek wished he could have found an undying bond with Art in all his solitary being.

MAUS is not a run of the mill comic; it is incorporation of the unspoken sentiments and assumed fallacies.
...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Kirk rated it it was amazing

Shelves: essential-reference

This was our second book in the local library's discussion of Jewish graphic novels. It is, of course, the most famous and most celebrated exemplar of the genre (if you don't count the superhero stuff). What is amazing about the book is the emotional resonance Spiegelman manages to pack into his panels. In telling the story of his father's experience in the Holocaust, the author refuses to sentimentalize or pander. The most striking innovation is the use of mice for Jews, an appropriation of the ...more

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Dec 08, 2014 Wanda rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2014, z-1000-guardian, book-club, ww2, graphic-novels

If this book hadn’t been a selection for my book club in January, I would never have picked it up. Not because I’m a snob about graphic novels—I think they are legitimate form of literature and very enjoyable to boot. But I might have avoided Maus because of the subject matter—I haven’t read very much about the holocaust and that is by choice. I guess I’m a chicken, but I hate exploring just how terribly we can treat one another. I haven’t yet read Romeo Dallaire’s book about the Rwandan genocid If this book hadn’t been a selection for my book club in January, I would never have picked it up. Not because I’m a snob about graphic novels—I think they are legitimate form of literature and very enjoyable to boot. But I might have avoided Maus because of the subject matter—I haven’t read very much about the holocaust and that is by choice. I guess I’m a chicken, but I hate exploring just how terribly we can treat one another. I haven’t yet read Romeo Dallaire’s book about the Rwandan genocide either—I’ve got exactly the same issue with it.

Spiegelman doesn’t shy away from showing the atrocities, the fear, and the damage done to those who survived the Second World War. And survival is never taken for granted—it happened when luck and hard work combined to keep people alive. I think that works like this are important to keep the memories of these events alive and in the public consciousness—our first hand witnesses are aging and won’t be with us much longer. The Canadian veterans that I know are in their 80s and 90s, so holocaust survivors will be in the same age range and probably experiencing health problems relating back to war time conditions. This graphic novel format makes this history accessible to a new generation in a form that they can appreciate.

I am of two minds regarding the depictions of various nationalities as animals, Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, etc. On one hand, it insulates us a little bit from the harrowing history that is being related. We can feel a bit of a remove that makes it easier to read. But I can help wondering if that is a good thing? I also a bit bothered by the nationalities being represented by completely different species. After all, we are all one species and if one nationality is capable of genocide, every nationality is capable of it. We’ve had enough atrocities take place since WWII that we know that to be true. Separate species draws the “us” and “them” boundaries just a little too clearly, when we know from the novel itself that some Jews were “collaborators” and some Germans resisted the Nazis. There’s enough bad and good stuff to go around.

I did, however, admire Spiegelman’s brave decision to explore his relationship with his father on the page. It became obvious very early in the narrative that survival itself had not made his father a happy man. Instead, he seemed to become deeply suspicious, rigid in his ideas, selfish, and generally unpleasant. The suicide of his wife (who suffered from mental illness before the war) may have solidified him into this barricaded position, to which he cannot admit his second wife or even his son. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for a man who so desperately needed human compassion and love and who kept stubbornly poking it away with a stick. How many generations will it take to remove this psychic damage from families of holocaust survivors? Spiegelman is brave to expose his struggles to help, accept, and love his father—he is loaded with guilt for not having been present during the worst years, for being the child that survived, for disliking his father, for not being able to provide the unconditional support that his father seems to expect. Smaller versions of this play out in many families (I watched my father struggle with miniature versions of these same issues), so in many ways this is a universal story.

A valuable study in human nature and family relationships as well as recent history.
...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Megan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-novel, memoir, 2010, nonfiction, history, adult, courier

Books I read rarely affect my emotions when I'm not reading it. A book can pull me every which way, make me feel horrified or saddened or joyful, but when I put it down, I'm in the same mood I was before I started reading it. Only occasionally can a book get under my skin, and Maus is one of them. I was actually happy to finish it, because I didn't like the way it was making me feel: anxious, upset, unhappy. And I've read Holocaust stuff before. It's not new. Something about the way Spiegelman c ...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Arnie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviews

When I was a kid I read comic books (mostly Superman). The Maus books are the only graphic novels I've read and I consider them masterpieces (Mausterpieces?). Like Spiegelman's alter ego, I was a middle class child growing up in Queens (NYC), the son of Holocaust survivors and couldn't communicate with my father when I was growing up. He got it down perfectly. It was spot on and ranks among the best of Holocaust related literature. ...more

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Sep 06, 2017 Gabrielle rated it really liked it

Shelves: wwii, historical, own-a-copy, reviewed, read-in-2017, mandatory-reading, graphic-novels, non-fiction, biographies-and-memoirs

This is not an easy graphic novel to read. The illustrations are beautiful, but the simple black and white style reminds the reader that the subject matter is one of the darkest periods of modern history. This very personal glimpse into the horrors of the Holocaust touch on many complex emotions: loyalty, fear, survivor’s guilt, anger…

Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek is a Holocaust survivor, who grew up and lived in Poland, was drafted into the Polish army, lived in a P.O.W. camp, the Jewish ghett This is not an easy graphic novel to read. The illustrations are beautiful, but the simple black and white style reminds the reader that the subject matter is one of the darkest periods of modern history. This very personal glimpse into the horrors of the Holocaust touch on many complex emotions: loyalty, fear, survivor’s guilt, anger…

Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek is a Holocaust survivor, who grew up and lived in Poland, was drafted into the Polish army, lived in a P.O.W. camp, the Jewish ghettos, was eventually sent to Auschwitz and saw countless family members and friends die before the end of the war and his eventual relocation in America. The graphic novel tells the story of Art getting his father to open up about his life and tell him what he went through, as he himself tries to understand why he struggles to connect with Vladek.

I hadn’t expected that roughly half of this book is actually about Art coming to terms with what his parents endured, with his issues making art about the Holocaust and making money (not to mention getting famous) off this work he feels incredibly uneasy about. There was a history of depression and possible mental illness in his family (you learn early on that this mother was depressive and committed suicide) that their history probably amplified. He uses an interesting meta approach to discuss this, illustrating conversations with his wife and therapist, to illustrate that the experience of creating this graphic novel was a struggle on many different levels. This harrowing portrait of the multi-generational consequences of war is probably what gutted me most as I read this: even long after the bombs stopped dropping, damage continues to be inflicted on people who weren’t even born during the war because of the unimaginable reality their parents had to survive.

This book has historical significance both from its subject, but also because it was one of the first graphic novels that got serious academic interest, and the first to ever win a Pulitzer Prize: the medium had often been dismissed as comic strips before, but Spiegelman’s use of metaphor and the very intimate story he chose to tell showed that graphic novels were not limited to Superman and Archie stories. This makes “Maus” an important and seminal work that’s worth a read if only on that basis (and yes, I am aware that underground comics had touched non-traditional topics before and used a post-modernist approach, but I am strictly talking about more mainstream publications).

The representations of different groups of people as different animals bothered me at first, because it felt like an easy generalization. But I read an interview with Spiegelman where he discusses where the idea comes from (old German propaganda films that depicted Jews as vermin, for instance) and also that he wanted to underline the absurdity of dividing people by assuming that each ethnicity has a uniform look or set of physical traits that defines them as human beings. I get the point he is trying to make: the anthropomorphic animals also make the incredibly difficult subject a little easier to absorb. I’m not sure I could have read the whole book in a couple of sittings had the drawings been more realistic.

Imperfect but highly recommended. ...more

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Dec 26, 2013 Barry Pierce rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2014, 20th-century

I really, really loved this. It's a fascinating and fresh portrayal of a (yet another) victim's experience of the Holocaust. I loved the meta aspect of this as well, the actual presentation of how the novel was written is fascinating.

However, my one criticism is that I feel Spiegelman didn't use the whole mice and cats metaphor as well as he could. This novel would have had the exact same impact and tone if he just drew everyone as humans. I feel like the anthropomorphism was... pointless. Ther ...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Sue rated it it was amazing

Shelves: graphic-novel, bio-memoir, holocaust-literature, read-in-2011, wwii, jews-in-europe

This was an amazing read.

This was so good. I've known about it for a long time but somehow never sought it out. Maybe it was a bias against graphic novels? Not sure. I'm so glad I finally read it. This is a picture of human strength and frailty, humane and savage behavior, done in a novel way that seems to make it even more immediate and real.
...more

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Feb 19, 2019 Kylie Amber rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-read

Such an intense and strong graphic novel

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Jun 20, 2020 Vikas Singh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: review-of-the-year, owned-book

This is the longest review that I have ever written but then you cannot do justice to a book that has won a Pulitzer and Eisner award if you do not dissect it well enough. I look forward to your feedback on the review
Spiegelman was born in Stockholm in 1948. His parents, Wladyslaw and Andzia Spiegelman (Vladek and Anja in Maus) were Polish Jews and Holocaust survivors. They had come to Sweden as refugees after World War-2 and later immigrated to the United States in 1951. They settled in the Reg ...more

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Apr 09, 2018 Stephen Robert Collins rated it it was amazing

What a great way to show the history of Auschwitz & The life of Art.
I am a cat person so Nazis as cats is very funny. This a classic the art work i Black &White because it makes it comes across very much an evil dark time.
This NOT as one idiot said a 'child's book" like Animal Farm this book with a vast point to make in this case tear jerker that is a subject we hope NEVER returns.
Constatation camps are not a German invention Hitler get the blame but They are British government from the Boer wa ...more

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BookTube: Creativ...: Maus I-II by Art Spiegelman	2	8	Feb 23, 2021 07:07AM
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About Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman

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Art Spiegelman (born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev) is New-York-based comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic memoir, Maus. ...more