Monday, December 20, 2010

Maus 1 - Art Speigleman

Title: Maus 1: A Survivor's Tale: My father bleeds history
Author: Art Spiegleman
Published 1986
Pages: 159
Genre: Memoir, Non-fiction, Graphic Novels
Rating: 4/5

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.

Reason I read this book: Read this book because I am doing it for a few challenges on Goodreads.


Thoughts: I really liked it.  I hadn't read the book in 9 years and forgot how powerful the book is.  While it is a lot like Holocaust survivor stories, it isn't a lot like them.  There is an uniqueness that the story is told and how it is expressed.  It is a brilliant book.  I probably should read the second part of the book, but I have other books that I need to read.


Bottom Line:  It is an excellent book and coupled with Maus II, it is a very powerful story that probably wouldn't have been as quite as powerful if it had been written in prose form.

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