Changes

|title=Maus

|author=Art Spiegelman

|buy=Yes

|borrow=Yes

|pages=296

|publisher=Penguin Books Ltd

|date=October 2003

|isbn=0141014083

}}

Maus is written by Art Spiegelman, an American graphic artist. 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 of his father's story is Art's story: the story of how the book came to be, and the story of the troubled relationship between the American son and the Polish holocaust survivor father. To me, this double strand of narrative is very important. It seems somehow to add a sense of involvement in the Spiegelman story, a sense of the importance of hearing the stories of your parents and grandparents, a sense of the invaluable contribution personal experience and oral history has to add to your own understanding of your own life today. Art Spiegelman's life is affected by the holocaust in as many ways as is his father's. It is unbearably hard for them both. "Nobody can understand," groans his father at one point, and that stark little cartoon panel says it all really.

{{amazontext|amazon=0141014083}}

{{commenthead}}