Synopsis
MAUS, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel and illustrated biography by Art Spiegelman, is widely considered to have vaulted the graphic novel to new heights in terms of literary quality, artistic merit, and personal and historical complexity. Using anthropomorphic animal characters (Jews are depicted as mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, etc.) and a combination of flashbacks, memories, and stories, Spiegelman recounts the experiences of his father ,Vladek Spiegelman, before, during, and after World War II, including his harrowing years spent in the concentration camps. The use of cartoons to describe such appalling events seems problematic, but MAUS brilliantly captures not only the awful weight of history, but also humorous and humane moments from a dark time in human civilization.
The second volume of the graphic novel, AND HERE MY TROUBLES BEGAN, tells of Vladek Spiegelman's entry into Auschwitz, his eventual release, and the difficulty of his assimilation into American culture, with the burden of his traumatic experiences weighing on his mind and heart. Ironically, the subtitle comes from something Vladek told Spiegelman AFTER he had escaped the concentration camps--a testament to how the agony of memory can be as cruel actual experience. The truth of this can be seen in the fate of Anja, Art's mother. Though she had survived, against terrible odds, the Nazi regime, she could not survive her own demons, and eventually committed suicide.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1991-11-01 | | Edition Description: | Illustrated |
| Size | | Length: | 135 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 16.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
When Maus was published in 1987, it was an instantaneous success. A comic book in which Jews are mice, Germans are cats, and Poles are pigs, it was like nothing else published before--at once a novel and a biography, recapturing the full terror of the Jews in Poland during the holocaust. Now Spiegelman delivers the long-awaited second half of the tale of his parents' survival of Auschwitz.
Industry Reviews
"Art Spiegelman doesn't draw comics. It might be clever to say he draws tragics, but that would be inaccurate too. Like its predecessor, "Maus: A Survivor's Tale II. And Here My Troubles Began" is a serious form of pictorial literature, sustaining and even intensifying the power of the first volume. It resists defining labels."
(11/03/1991)
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