LibGuides: Comics (& Graphic Novels): Maus

Graphic Novel & Related Books

Maus is a biographical drama written and illustrated by Art Spiegelman. It tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, the author's father, who was interned with the other Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe. While he miraculously survived the tragedy, it left scars upon him and his family that may never truly heal.

We currently have Volumes 1-2 of this comic (2 total).

Maus, Vol. 1: My Father Bleeds History
Call Number: D 804.3 .S66 1984 V. I
ISBN: 9780394747231
Publication Date: 1986-08-12

Inside Flap [Vol. 1]: Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. It is, as the New York Times Book Review has commented, "a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness... an unfolding literary event."

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Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: The first is Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author's tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to live a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor's tale—and that, too, of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Part I of Maus takes Spiegelman's parents to the gates of Auschwitz and him to the edge of despair. Put aside all your preconceptions. These cats and mice are not Tom and Jerry, but something quite different. This is a new kind of literature.
Maus, Vol. 2: And Here My Troubles Began
Call Number: D 804.3 .S66 1991 V. II
ISBN: 9780679729778
Publication Date: 1991-09-01

Inside Flap [Vol. 2]: Acclaimed as a quite triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.

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This second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Begin, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level, this is the ultimate survivor's tale—and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Maus depicts the events of the Holocaust with shocking sincerity, so much so that it can difficult to rationalize why (and how) something like it could really happen. In this book, Peter Hayes goes over the messy details, explaining how it was a perfect storm of factors that led to one of the ultimate tragedies.

Why? Explaining the Holocaust
Call Number: D 804.3 .H387 2017
ISBN: 9780393254365
Publication Date: 2017-01-17

Inside Flap: Despite the outpouring of books, movies, museums, memorials, and courses devoted to the Holocaust, a coherent explanation of why such ghastly carnage erupted from the heart of civilized Europe in the twentieth century still seems elusive even seventy years later. Numerous theories have sprouted in an attempt to console ourselves and to point the blame in emotionally satisfying directions—yet none of them are fully convincing. As witnesses to the Holocaust near the ends of their lives, it becomes that much more important to unravel what happened and to educate a new generation about the horrors inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews and non-Jews alike.

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Why? dispels many misconceptions and answers some of the most basic—yet vexing—questions that remain: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why such a swift and sweeping extermination? Why didn't more Jews fight back more often? Why didn't they receive more help? While responding to the questions he has been most frequently asked by students over the decades, world-renowned Holocaust historian and professor Peter Hayes brings a wealth of scholarly research and experience to bear on conventional, popular views of the history, challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations. He alleges that there is no single theory that "explains" the Holocaust; the convergence of multiple forces at a particular moment in time led to catastrophe.

In clear prose informed by an encyclopedic knowledge of Holocaust literature in English and German, Hayes weaves together stories and statistics to heart-stopping effect. Why? is an authoritative, groundbreaking exploration of the origins of one of the most tragic events in human history.

Maus is a very personal account of the Holocaust, so much so that it can't possibly cover everything. In this book, David Cesarani gives an in-depth account of its horrors, from the first year of the Nazi party's dominance to the dissolution of the Third Reich, complete with maps and photographs of the events.

Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews, 1933 - 1949
Call Number: D 804.3 .C434 2016
ISBN: 9781250000835
Publication Date: 2016-11-08

Inside Flap: David Cesarani's Final Solution is a magisterial work of history that chronicles the fate of Europe's Jews. Based on decades of scholarship, documentation newly available from the opening of Soviet archives, declassification of western intelligence service records, as well as diaries and reports written in the camps, Cesarani provides a sweeping reappraisal challenging accepted explanations for the anti-Jewish politics of Nazi Germany and the inevitability of the Final Solution.

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The persecution of the Jews, as Cesarani sees it, was not always the Nazi's central preoccupation, nor was it inevitable. He shows how, in German-occupied countries, it unfolded erratically, often due to local initiatives. For Cesarani, war was critical to the Jewish fate. Military failure denied the Germans opportunities to expel Jews into a distant territory and created a crisis of resources that led to the starvation of the ghettos and intensified anti-Jewish measures. Looking at the historical record, he disputes the iconic role of railways and deportation trains. From prisoner diaries, he exposes the extent of sexual violence and abuse of Jewish women and follows the journey of some Jewish prisoners to displaced persons camps.

David Cesarani's Final Solution is the new standard chronicle of the fate of a heroic people caught in the hell that was Hitler's Germany.

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Maus (Comic Book)
Site Description: Maus is the signature work of Art Spiegelman, a pioneer of the Underground Comics movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The work is a memoir of Spiegelman's parents, Holocaust survivors, and is interspersed throughout with images of Spiegelman and the strained relationship he has with his father in the present day. The interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father during this time make up the bulk of the book.

The work has all the basic underpinnings of a Holocaust memoir, portrayed in the comic book style. If you had seen it before, you would have recognized it: As a Mature Animal Story, World War II-era nationalities and people are all portrayed as Funny Animals.

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Maus
Site Description: Maus, often published as Maus: A Survivor's Tale, is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodern techniques, and represents Jews as mice and other Germans and Poles as cats and pigs respectively. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992 it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

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In the frame-tale timeline in the narrative present that begins in 1978 in New York City, Spiegelman talks with his father Vladek about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material and information for the Maus project he is preparing. In the narrative past, Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from the years leading up to World War II to his parents' liberation from the Nazi concentration camps. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father and the absence of his mother, who died by suicide when Spiegelman was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of Auschwitz. The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts.