Maus I
1986
- nyt:paperback_graphic_books=2011-09-17
- graphic novel
- history
- nazi
- art spiegelman
- concetration camp
- ww2
- holocaust survivors
- children of holocaust survivors
- comics & graphic novels, nonfiction, biography & memoir
The story
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
What it’s like
Stark black-and-white ink drawings with blocky, almost woodcut linework, where Jews are drawn as mice and Germans as cats, and the animal masks become a quiet, unsettling reminder of how people were reduced to categories. The pages are built on rigid nine-panel grids, often with thick gutters and heavy black shadows, so the tone feels sparse, controlled and airless. Its prose is plainspoken and clipped, full of a father's bluntly funny, bitter dialogue alternating with the cartoonist son's frustrated present-day scenes in a cluttered New Jersey home, which gives the reading a restless, stop-start rhythm. The vibe is somber and wry, closer to a slow, weighted ache than to despair, and the emotional register stays dry and tense rather than sentimental. Intensity is high: the book depicts Holocaust atrocities, deportation, starvation and suicide, with violence and death shown plainly and occasionally graphically, though never gratuitously. Best suited to a deliberate, late-night or quiet-afternoon read, for people who want serious history told with formal daring, and a sharp, self-questioning look at how a child inherits a parent's trauma.
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