Maus

Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

About Maus in brief

Summary Maus Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs. Most of the book weaves in and out of two timelines. In the frame tale of the narrative present, Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City in 1978–79. The story that Vladesk tells unfolds in the narrative past, which begins in the mid-1930s and continues until the end of the Holocaust in 1945. The book uses a minimalist drawing style and displays innovation in its pacing, structure, and page layouts. It was one of the first graphic novels to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world. A three-page strip also called ‘Maus’ that he made in 1972 gave Spiegelman an opportunity to interview his father. The recorded interviews became the basis for the graphic novel, which Spiegelman began in 1978, and was serialized in Raw from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in Raw, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly, who also appears in Maus.

It has been described as the “most influential graphic novel of the 20th century” and “one of the most influential graphic novels of all time” The book was published by Simon & Schuster in 1986 and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. It is published in hardback and e-book editions, as well as a limited edition of 1,000 copies in hardcover and 2,500 copies in paperback. The first edition of the hard-cover edition was published in 1987 and the second edition in 1988 and the third edition in 1989. It will be published for the 50th anniversary of the death of Spiegelman’s mother, Anja, on November 11, 2013. The second edition will be released on November 14, 2013, and will be available in hard-back and paperback. It includes a foreword by the author, who is also the co-author of the second volume, “Maus: A Memoir of a Mother and a Son” (Simon and Schuster, 2008). It will also be published in a hardback edition of 2,000 pages, with a second volume to be released in 2014. The third volume will be out in paperback on November 15, 2013 and will also include a paperback version of the third volume of Maus, which was published on November 13, 2013 (and the fourth volume of the fourth edition on November 16, 2013). The fourth volume will come out on November 17, 2014 ( and the fifth volume on November 18, 2014).