Maus vertelt het gruwelijke verhaal van de Joden en de Holocaust. Spiegelman interviewt zijn vader over zijn ervaringen als Poolse Jood in de jaren ’30 en ’40. Dat deze traumatische gebeurtenissen een zware impact hebben op zijn verdere leven blijkt ook uit de moeilijke relatie tussen vader en zoon. Het boek is een dierenstrip waarin de Joden worden weergegeven als muizen en de Duitsers als katten. Maus heeft in 1992 als eerste (en tot nu toe enige) graphic novel een Pulitzer gewonnen.

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, 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. It is, as the New York Times Book Review has commented, a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event.

Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: the first is Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author's tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor's tale - and that, too, of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Part I of Maus takes Spiegelman's parents to the gates of Auschwitz and him to the edge of despair. Put aside all your preconceptions. These cats and mice are not Tom and Jerry, but something quite different. This is a new kind of literature.

Uitgeverij: Pantheon
Schrijver: Art Spiegelman
Tekenaar: Art Spiegelman

ISBN: 9780394747231