Complete Maus

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman - the Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust survivor story

'The most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust'

Wall Street Journal

'The first masterpiece in comic book history' The New Yorker

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust' (The New York Times).

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.

This combined, definitive edition includes Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II.

Art Spiegelman is a contributing editor and artist for the New Yorker. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Maus, and a Guggenheim fellowship. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Award. His other books include: Breakdowns: From Maus to Now, an Anthology of Strips; The Wild Party; Open Me, I'm A Dog; Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched to Their Limits; In the Shadow of No Towers; Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!; Be a Nose; Jack and the Box and MetaMaus. He lives in New York.

Review: The first masterpiece in comic book history * New Yorker *

One of the cliches about the Holocaust is that you can't imagine it - Spiegelman disproves this theory * Independent *

A brutally moving work of art * Boston Globe *

In the tradition of Aesop and Orwell, it serves to shock and impart powerful resonance to a well-documented subject. The artwork is so accomplished, forceful and moving * TimeOut *

Spiegelman has turned the exuberant fantasy of comics inside out by giving us the most incredible fantasy in comics' history: something that actually occurred. Maus is terrifying not for its brutality, but for its tenderness and guilt * New Yorker *

An epic story told in tiny pictures * New York Times *

The most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust * Wall Street Journal *

Maus is a book that cannot be put down, truly, even to sleep...when you finish Maus, you are unhappy to have left that magical world and long for the sequel that will return you to it -- Umberto Eco

A remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event * New York Times Book Review *

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in 'drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust' * New York Times *

A quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics * Washington Post *

All too infrequently, a book comes along that' s as daring as it is acclaimed. Art Spiegelman's Maus is just such a book * Esquire *

A remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution... at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book. Brilliant, just brilliant -- Jules Feiffer

Maus is a masterpiece, and it's in the nature of such things to generate mysteries, and pose more questions than they answer. But if the notion of a canon means anything, Maus is there at the heart of it. Like all great stories, it tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect -- Philip Pullman

Spiegelman's Maus changed comics forever. Comics now can be about anything -- Alison Bechdel

Reading [his work] has been an amazing lesson in storytelling * Etgar Keret *

It can be easy to forget how much of a game-changer Maus was. * Washington Post *