Book Review: Maus by Art Spiegelman

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Book Title: Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Graphic novel
First published: 1980
296 pages
My rating: 5/5

Maus has been on my radar for years now, so when I spotted it in my local library a few weeks ago, I had to pick it up. This complete edition of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has both parts of the graphic novel, “My Father Bleeds History” and “And Here My Troubles Began.” The graphic novel tells the tale of the artist’s father and his survival through the holocaust. The book depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, with other nationalities as other animals.

Art Spiegelman’s parents Vladek and Anja Spiegelman were two Jews from Poland who survived the Nazi ghetto of Sosnowiec and the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Maus depicts the complicated relationship between Art and his father and, in an alternate timeline, his parent’s experiences in Poland during the holocaust. Part one, “My Father Bleeds History” narrates how Vladek and Anja met and got married and describes their early family life and the Nazi occupation and the persecution of Jews. Part two, “And Here My Troubles Began” concentrates on Vladek’s experiences on the concentration camp and how he was liberated and reunited with his wife.

I loved how honest this story it. Spiegelman doesn’t present holocaust survivors as saints or his father as a better person than he was. Instead, he depicts how the holocaust affected not only the survivors’ but also their children’s lives. This is a moving depiction of one family’s survival of the horrors of the Nazi regime and the concentration camps. I highly recommend this book to anyone, it’s a must-read.