Thumbs up for Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman. Graphic novel/history.
As far as Holocaust survival stories go, I’d say this is miles better than Night (see my review). Spiegelman’s scribbly, stark illustrations – Jews as mice, Germans as cats – fit the story perfectly as he reports his father’s experiences as a young man, when the elder Spiegelman (a Polish Jew) survived WWII via cleverness and buckets of luck. The flash-forward scenes in which Spiegelman struggles with his elderly, ailing, and, shall we say, difficult, father, interviewing him for Maus itself, inject a bit of black humor into the books and alleviate the nausea somewhat. A work of art as well as history and well-deserving of its modern classic status.
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