Maus - Art spiegelman

My first graphic novel. Last year in a book fair i asked the attender to suggest me some comics or graphic novel , the guy told me Marvel comics were nice and i told him i did not like superheroes stories, then he told me that i can try Japanese comics. After 6 months I bought my first Japanese Manga book but i have not touched it till now.Something in my mind told me read a graphic novel - just for experience. So i searched in Google and i found hundreds of suggestions, at last i settled for "Maus by Art spiegelman" . I really don't know why i chose this book. But now i think this is one of the best book i ever read.

The illustrations are awesome and symbolic. I'm used to ' words and occasional pictures' type of reading,  but this is different. I need to see the characters expression and read the dialogues, took sometime to do that. But once i used to it, i did not put down the book. This book made me feel  anxious, unhappy, upset and happy. Awesome work.

This is the holocaust survival story of the author's parents -Vladek and Anja .The author beautifully bring the lives of Jews under Nazi and his parents experience in Poland before the second world war and later in Auschwitz  I have read one or two books about Holocaust and Nazis but none of those books are emotional, very detailed and first hand account like this one.(May be i could not find those kind of books yet). There are two different Vladek portrayed - one was very energetic, vibrant and jovial during the holocaust and another was very sensitive and manipulative after the escape specially in latter part his life. The author could not understand this. He tried his best to understand what exactly his parents went through and he came out with these wonderful books.

In this book , the author portrays Germans as cats, the Jews as mice, the Poles as pigs and the Americans as dogs.I can understand why the author chose mice and cats but not sure about pigs and dogs. When asked why he chose mice the author replied this(click here).  I was horrified when the author details the layout of the gas chambers and the mass burial site, unthinkable.

This book comes in two :
Part I : Maus - A Survivor's Tale - My Father Bleeds History
Part II: Maus - A Survivor's Tale - And Here My Troubles Began

I read both one after another and it was wonderful.In my list of classics Maus sits right on top. Now I'm very much interested in reading  graphic novels waiting to start the next one.

Everyone should read Maus atleast once.

An interesting interview with the author