The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman

Book cover of Maus, depicting two mice huddled together. Behind them, there’s a Nazi symbol with a cat skull positioned in its center.

By using the cat and mouse analogy, Speigelman paints a haunting tale of the history of Hitler’s Europe and its generational impact.

THEMES:

Holocaust, Antisemitism, Family

OVERVIEW

A brutally moving work of art--widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written--Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale, weaving the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father into an astonishing retelling of one of history's most unspeakable tragedies. It is an unforgettable story of survival and a disarming look at the legacy of trauma (Bookshop).


Publication Date: November 19, 1996

Audiobook? Yes

Languages? English

Age Range: 15+

Read Time: 5 hours (at 300 WPM)

ISBN-13: 9780679406419


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Art Spiegelman is a contributing editor and artist for The New Yorker, and a co-founder / editor of Raw, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries here and abroad. Honors he has received for Maus include the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly, and their two children, Nadja and Dashiell (Bookshop).



 

Art Spiegelman speaks with Democracy Now! about the Tennessee book bans and his work (February 2022, Democracy Now!)

 

Upon Reflection host Marcia Alvar speaks with Art Spiegelman about his own parents' survival in the Holocaust and how he developed a better sense of their generation through story depiction (1991, University of Washington)


IN THE NEWS

  • The Fight Over ‘Maus’ Is Part of a Bigger Cultural Battle in Tennessee (NYTimes)

  • KATY ISD is reviewing whether Holocaust novels are appropriate for students (Houston Chronicle)


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