The Complete MAUS: The Pulitzer-winning graphic novel depicting the Holocaust - by the author who transformed the genre

A legendary and iconic graphic novel. This is an important and must read biographical story. Wonderfully illustrated, simple and too the point.

I am a student of the Holocaust, having heard my dad tell of his role in liberating the camps when he was in the US army medical corps as they swept through the devastation of Germany and Poland as the Nazis were being defeated. I am also a native Tennessean, embarrassed and angered by a certain Tennessee school board for banning this hook. But had they not done that, I might never have read it! I didn’t think I would be a fan of a ‘cartoon’ book. Was I ever wrong! The tale of Nazi hatred of the Jews is exactly that told in many another history, detailing the horror and inhumanity of the outrageous purge of an entire people. My father was a photographer, too, and as a young boy in 1950s Tennessee I discovered his photo albums: the gas chambers, the ovens, the stacks of bodies, the surviving living skeletons in striped pyjamas. He sat me down and explained it in terms a young boy like me might understand. I went on to become a teacher, and was glad to lead units of study of the Holocaust to middle and high school students, and to lead visits to Auschwitz and Terezin so that we could see for ourselves what inhumanity could and did do. This prize-winning book is beautifully arranged, easy to follow, and non-putdownable. It so wonderfully portrays the lives and deaths of the unfortunate victims of Nazism. That a Tennessee school board could ban this book because of one drawing or one phrase expressing outrage at Nazi behaviour simply shows their ignorant rightwing lack of empathy. Yet, their actions have had a good result in making more people buy and read the book, people like me. Hopefully people like you. The world is not rid of racial prejudice, intolerance, religious bigotry, warfare…MAUS needs to be read as a history lesson that teaches us today that it could happen again, as it might be in Ukraine now, and in other places where intolerance and self-righteousness lead people into acts of deprivation and pain. This book is essential reading.

This book, which transformed the graphic novel genre, sheds a deeply personal light on the horrors of the Holocaust, as experienced by the author's father, Vladek. Vladek survives the Holocaust through a combination of sheer luck and his entrepreneurial capacity to wheel and deal his way out of trouble. But survivor's guilt and trauma turn him into an irascible and tormented old man, testing the patience of his son who sets out to record his experiences. The horror and insanity of the Holocaust are graphically described, and this book should be essential reading for all young people trying to understand what happened - it is a great shame that some libraries in the US have been denied permission to stock this remarkable and important book.

This book tells the story of Spiegelman's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew and an Auschwitz survivor. Vladek is a survivor of unimaginable displacement, bereavement and loss. But only part of him survives. For he is a man broken and shriveled by the ordeals he endured and overcame, to the detriment of those who came after him. I loved this book because it tells a story with great power, but avoids falling into the traps of sermonising, drawing `lessons' or `morals' from the events it relates therein, or sentimentalising its protagonist, the author's father. An example of this is his father's racist outburst against a black hitchhiker. When rebuked, Vladek refuses to see any link between his racism and Nazi racism. This requires both emotional and moral courage on the part of the author to relate so unsparingly, with no attempt at explanation or mitigation. It just is. At the heart of so much human evil is a mysterious lacuna, which defies any attempt at neat rational explanation. This is not to say that such explanations should not be attempted. It is to say that the author wisely refrains from diluting the emotional power of the book by being diverted by such discussions. They belong elsewhere. Moreover, the author refuses to offer an uplifting coda by way of a happy ending which somehow redeems all that has gone before. Not only does the past continue to `bleed history', but so does the present. The author's relationship with his father remains problematic at the conclusion (at the end of the story, Spiegelman's father mistakes him for his sibling lost during the holocaust), as does the burden of the past, which voices no explanation for the horrors that transpired. The artwork is deceptively spare and austere, yet it creates a vivid impression of the lost world of the author's parents before the war, as well as the horrific calamities which befell them during the course of it. The extended metaphor of cats and mice perfectly captures the execution of the so-called `Final Solution', especially the sadistic torment the Nazis subjected their victims before their annihilation. The metaphor, although criticised, is in fact perfectly apposite for the historical events it depicts. It deserves to be considered a foremost example of holocaust literature, and bears comparison with Primo Levi. While not a not a first-person account of a survivor's testimony, I think Maus bears comparison with Levi for its absolute integrity and restraint in relating events, which nearly 70 years later, still stagger the imagination.

After watching Nerdwriter1's video essay of Maus I was very interested in buying the graphic novel, and honestly that video couldn't fully describe the joy I felt reading it. It's been a while since I've read Maus so bear with me while I recount what I can remember about it. Maus follows Art Spiegelman interviewing his father Vladek Spiegelman about how he survived the holocaust. The characters, including Art himself, are drawn as anthropomorphic animals in a style that's very unique. Each animal corresponds to a certain group in the graphic novel: the Jewish as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, and the Americans as dogs (I don't remember if other groups like the British are depicted). This stylistic choice is very important: it's reclaiming the style of propaganda that the Nazi's used to depict the Jewish (in particular how they dehumanized the Jewish by depicting them as pitch black rats. The mice in Maus are the opposite being the colour white). The story as a whole is Vladek's experience during Europe's most horrific time, his other stories like how he met Art's mother, with Art's experience and stories coming in from time to time. In fact, one part that focuses on Art's experience is one of my favourite parts of the whole comic, which is the start of the Time Flies chapter until about page 207. It's a very personal and raw look at Art's perspective on his family's life, on Maus itself a bit, the dogged interviewers and greedy licensers he had to deal with, he solace when going to his therapist, then it capped off with a lonely sigh as the tape played Vladek's last issue with his wife and then continued with the story. The whole comic is honest, real, and poignantly written, and the beautiful ink pen drawings add so much to the story. I won't bore you with a full analysis, I'll just say it's absolutely beautiful and now I want to read it all over again. (Also, it upsets me dearly that some people would ban Maus from school libraries cause it has swastikas...in a WW2 story. Yeah. Any school that has Maus on their shelves deserves my respect)

Originally posted on A Frolic Through Fiction As someone who loves learning about history, I was always going to like this graphic memoir. And while I’m on a bid to introduce myself to more non fiction, a graphic memoir was the perfect way to start that. So this is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, drawn through his son, Art Spiegelman. And that one point alone – how it was done – was the main crux of my enjoyment. Because it wasn’t just the story of war. Oh no. Instead of simply drawing what his father said, Art Spiegelman actually drew the entire process. He drew himself visiting his dad, coaxing him into telling more of his story. He drew what he was like in later life, a small snapshot into how all this affected him long-term. And through that, I found myself feeling like I was sat right in front of Vladek Spiegelman – him in a chair, myself cross legged on the floor – while he told his story. How a graphic memoir can do that, with so little words in comparison to novels, is beyond me. But I loved it. And then we have the art. Completely black and white with quite a sketchy look, each page is packed with drawings. It can look a bit overwhelming at first, but I personally think it suits the story really well. There’s the metaphor too – the Nazis are drawn as cats, terrorising the mice (ding ding ding, we have the title: Maus). Such a simple way to explain things, in a time when things weren’t simple at all. Suitable for a graphic memoir though, since there’s not really much leverage in explaining who each person on the page is and which “side” they belong to. I expected to get emotional. But… I didn’t. I have a feeling that’s partly to do with the fact it’s a graphic memoir, and not as much time is spent describing how horrendous everything is. But also because of Vladek Spiegelman himself. It’s his story, yet as he tells it, he doesn’t seem to reveal many emotions. He just…tells the story. Here are the facts. This is what happened. Though I might have felt more had a bit more been revealed about Art Spiegelman’s mother. In the beginning, it’s mentioned that she committed suicide after the war, and while it does go into it a little bit, nothing about that is really explained. Granted, that may be because they don’t know much themselves. But still. She’s mentioned so often throughout the memoir – as you would expect – but she herself doesn’t seem to be in it much. I’d have liked to see more of her. As hard as they try, books will never be able to portray these events accurately. Nothing will. There’s a nod to that even in this book. But with things like these, though I (luckily) may not be able to imagine such ongoing hunger, such heartbreak, the pain and suffering…I might be able to understand a bit more. I can read books like this and know that at least their story isn’t going untold. At least I’ll be here, remembering for them. And that is the least I can do.

Containing both volumes 1 and 2 of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, The Complete Maus tells the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman’s experience of surviving in Hitler’s Europe. The first and most important thing to make note of is that this is a completely true story. It isn’t a piece of fiction based in the truth of Auschwitz, it is a true account of Art Spiegelman’s father’s life during World War II. It is a heavy and intense read, but completely incredible. The second important thing you need to know about this book is that it is a graphic novel. It is masterfully drawn, with plenty of narration which makes it easy to read even if you’re not a regular graphic novel reader. The metaphorical representation of people is a massive part of this book. Jews are drawn as mice, Nazis as cats, the Allies as dogs, and Poles as pigs. This is an incredibly effective commentary on stereotypes, and highlights the absurdity of dividing people by nationality. The brutal honesty about life as a Jew during the Nazi occupation is shocking and horrific, but truly, truly fascinating. On another level, the relationship between Art and Vladek is also explored, and it really shows how the children of survivors can be so affected by the experience of their parents. Maus isn’t an easy or pleasant read by any means, but it is powerful and it’s essential. If you’re into graphic novels, you MUST read this book. If you’re into historical accounts and memoirs, you MUST read this book. If you read anything at all, you MUST read this book.

I see I'm not in a minority in posting a favourable review for this eloquent graphic novel. It's not a genre I've read much of, but this is a superb showcase for it. For those as yet unaware, Spiegelman's books are here combined, so this is the full volume telling the story of his parents, Vladek and Anja, and their families, and their endurance of persecution as Polish/Jewish citizens in WWII. The narrative is in effect telling the story of how he recorded his father's memories and the process of deciding how best to depict them. Vladek Spiegelman's story is not dissimilar to that of many millions who suffered, but his son's retelling here is moving, honest and even funny. Art's frustration with his ageing father's penny-pinching, for example, is humorously drawn even while Art is questioning whether this extreme behaviour is caused by experience of the ghettos and Auschwitz. It might seem obvious to us, but he knew many other veterans of the camps who were different. Right from the beginning we are told that Anja committed suicide in 1968, while her student son was in the midst of a mental breakdown, and while this isn't further explored, it's as much a book about the far-reaching, long-term consequences of genocide as it is about what life was like in occupied Poland. The final and obvious thing to say is that the characters are all depicted 'Animal Farm' style as creatures, denoted by race as mice (Jewish), cats (Germans), pigs (Polish), frogs (French), dogs (Americans) and moose (Swedish). (There are a couple of fish in there too but I wasn't sure who they represented - Canadians?!) This has raised objections from some quarters, about the connotations of portraying various nationalities as these particular creatures, but for me it was clear that Spiegelman's objectives were to highlight the absurdities of racial discrimination - there are points in the story where Vladek is seen to wear a pig mask, pretending to be Polish, and Art's French wife Francoise asks whether she will be drawn as a frog or a mouse. Needless to say there are 'good' and 'bad' characters depicted among all the races and what ultimately emerges is a portrait of a war not of race against race, but of humanity fighting tyranny, bigotry and despotism in the worst circumstances imaginable.