On the occa­sion of the twen­ty-fifth anniver­sary of its first pub­li­ca­tion, here is the defin­i­tive edi­tion of the book acclaimed as ​“the most affect­ing and suc­cess­ful nar­ra­tive ever done about the Holo­caust” (Wall Street Jour­nal) and ​“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.

Fur­ther Reading