Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Pantheon Graphic Library)

Although Maus provides some useful insights into camp live, the best descriptions of that are to be found in the memoirs of Levi and Wiesel and in the "Genocide" segment of the BBC's World at War series. Maus is really about survival, its true costs, and about how the children of survivors and in a larger sense all of us are survivors of the Holocaust burdened by collective guilt and owing a debt to past and future generations. The graphic novel technique allows Spiegelman to tell several tales at once -- it's not just the Auschwitz narrative that is important, but the current effects of the experience on Spiegelman's father Vladek, mother Anja, and on Spiegelman himself. The book ends with Vladek exhausted, saying good night, in a Freudian slip, to "Richieu", Spiegelman's older brother who died in the Holocaust. This is a fitting image, capturing the direct loss of the Holocaust as well as the cost to guilt ridden survivors like Vladek and succeeding generations who could never quite measure up to the memory of the victims. The most striking images in the book are two photographs: one of the beautiful and angelic Richieu and another of Vladek as a young man in a crisp camp uniform. Vladek was a striking and charismatic figure, who survived on the basis of quick wits mixed in with considerable luck. Had there been no Holocaust, he would have been a fabulously successful industrialist and entrepreneur. But surviving the Holocaust cost him his previous life and reduces him, tragically, to a pathetic figure who guilts his son into seeing him by making up a heart attack, who drives his current wife crazy, who becomes a caricature of the miserly Jew whose cheapness is maddening. The most moving and redeeming quality of Vladek is his love for his first wife Anja, who also survived the Holocaust owing in considerable part to the help and resourcefulness of Vladek. Yet, she commits suicide 25 years later, much like Primo Levi. Vladek destroys her journals in a fit of grief, and it is this loss that haunts the book. The mystery of Anja's death is never addressed or resolved. This is a complex and moving work.

I have always been a reader of comic books and graphic novels. I learned a lot of French from reading Asterix and Pilote, and was an avid reader of Classics Illustrated as a boy. So Art SPiegelman's graphic novel depiction of his family's holocaust experience, told by his father, was probably the best insight for me into what it was like to experience the holocaust as a victim. And of the social situations in Germany and central europe at the time. In my opinion, this book would not be inappropriate for a teen reader. It's worth re-reading as an adult - I've read both books twice and it stands the test of time. Really worthwhile. I salute you, Mr,. Spiegelman.

This is a wonderful series of books! I have read them many times and still enjoy them! I recommend them to everyone!

everyone takes risks buying paper copies but i ordered volume 1 and 2 and both had water damage so bad to the point that almost every page is warped. i’m still going to keep them, not mad enough to ask for replacement or a refund as i can still read the print and see the illustrations just fine but it is something to anticipate. likely not the sellers fault and was during shipment but regardless, i was hoping for something a little more pristine.

For those who enjoyed MAUS 1, they will love MAUS 2. Where MAUS 1 was more about what happened to Vladek Spiegleman, MAUS 2 is a story of how the holocaust impacted the people who experience it and via them, those who only heard about it. MAUS 2 clearly seems like a sequel made after great consideration. This time round, Art Spiegelman has drawn a narrative which highlights the tension between him and his father... his father who survived the holocaust by his wits but walked out of it more risk averse and afraid of the rest of his life and the son, Art, who feels the pain and misery of his fathers story but never seems to truly know how his father has been changed by the ordeal. The MAUS series should be read in every history classroom. It creates a world which words only cannot every construct. The younger generation has to be able to 'see' the holocaust with their own eyes to truly understand the suffering millions of innocent Jews had to face, just because Hitler was a maniac.