Art Spiegelman

Advantages: Many.
Disadvantages: Distress.

...Conor got it down from the shelf. I hadn't read it in years. And I wasn't sure whether to be glad or not. Maus is a powerful book. It tells one of the saddest stories in a history of sad stories man has created. Maus is the story of the Holocaust. It's told in comic strip format and that, of course, is what had attracted Conor, aged seven. I said it was a very sad book and was he sure he'd like to read it and he said he was sure. So together, we read. Maus is written by Art Spiegelman, an American cartoonist. It tells the story of his father Vladek's experiences under the Nazi regime; how he and his family avoided the concentration camps for a long, long time. There is a second volume which deals with the time his parents spent in Auschwitz before being liberated, reunited, and making their way to the United States. Layered on top... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: an extraordinary book, very touching
Disadvantages: none

...A comic on the holocaust? The Jews depicted as mice and the most infamous concentration camp as Mauschwitz? I had read positive reviews on the book and had to find out how that worked, if it worked at all for me. Art Spiegelman hasn't invented the genre but he's certainly expanded it, he's created a unique graphic book by the subject he's chosen. The author (from the cover) 'a contributing editor and artist for the New Yorker, cofounder/editor of Raw, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics' has made first and foremost a classical comic, i.e., 'a story about anthropomorphically depicted animals, told sequentially in a series of square panels six to a page, containing speech balloons and voice-over captions in which all the lettering is in capitals, with onomatopoeic sound-effects to represent rifle-fire, and so on... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Graphic novel format, makes it feel authentic while not being romanticised account of the Holocaust
Disadvantages: Almost unbearably moving, does not make you feel good about being a human being...

...This is a book that I cannot recommend enough, if I could give it 10 stars, I would. Maus 2 : And Here My Troubles Began is the sequel to Maus 1: A Survivor's Tale My Father bleeds History, the verysuccessful graphic novel on the Holocaust, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The author who is also a main character in the story, Art Spiegelman (referred to as Artie) interviews his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, about his past. Part 1 traces the father's life and loves from the mid- 1930s to the winter of 1944, so we witness the changes gradually brought about to his life as the situation deteriorates in Poland. Part 2 is even darker and focuses on the father's time in Auschwitz. Because it is a graphic novel, you can actually SEE , and not only hear what was going on in the gas chambers, for example. Now I don... Read review

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