The Complete MAUS
There are books that inform, books that entertain, and then, rarely, books that change the way you see everything after them. Art Spiegelman's MAUS belongs to that last, almost solitary category. The only graphic novel ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize, it remains one of the most quietly devastating reading experiences available in any format. At its heart, MAUS follows Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish man who lived through Hitler's Europe, as recounted to his son Art, a cartoonist wrestling with both the story and the storyteller. Spiegelman makes a bold, disquieting choice: the Nazis are depicted as cats, the Jews as mice. Far from trivialising the horror, this visual metaphor sharpens it. The familiar becomes strange, and the strange becomes unbearable in the best possible way. Two timelines run through the book in conversation with each other. In one, Vladek endures the unthinkable. In the other, Art visits his ageing father, and the two bicker, misunderstand each other, and circle the enormous silence between them. Survival guilt haunts every ordinary exchange, every small domestic argument. History is not something these men study from a distance; it lives in the room with them. This combined edition brings together both volumes into a single, essential collection. Philip Pullman once noted that it tells us more about ourselves than we might expect, and that observation holds up. MAUS is specific, personal, and utterly human, which is precisely why it reaches so far.
- Author: Art Spiegelman
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Family & Relationships
- ISBN: 978-0141014081
- Pages: 296 pages