Maus I: My Father Bleeds History

Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a comic book artist, who tries to find common ground with his father, understand his horrific past, and History itself. Its format – that of a story in pictures (the Nazis are cats, the Jews are mice) – manages with astonishing ease to shake us off the feeling that we are reading about painfully familiar events, and reveals the ineffable through the insignificant. It is, as the New York Times Book Review notes, “a remarkable achievement, combining the comprehensiveness of a document with the brilliance of a novel… an enduring literary event.

Set in Poland and in Riga Park, New York, “Maus” tells two powerful stories: The first describes how Spiegelman’s father and his wife survived in Nazi Europe – a heartbreaking story filled with incredible escapes, the horrors of captivity, and betrayal. The second tells the story of the author’s tormented relationship with his aging father as they try to live a normal life, woven from petty arguments and fleeting encounters against the backdrop of a turbulent history. In every way, it is the most perfect chronicle of the survivors, as well as their offspring, who are also struggling to survive.

Part I of Maus takes Spiegelman’s parents to the gates of Auschwitz and him to the brink of despair. Forget your preconceptions and prejudices. These cats and mice are not Tom and Jerry, but something else entirely. This is a new kind of literature.

Paperback

Artist: Art Spiegelman

Translator: Vladimir Poleganov

ISBN: 978-619-76264-0-7