Maus

Introduction

Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale is a two-volume graphic novel that documents the survival of the author's parents, both Polish Jews, during the Holocaust. Spiegelman depicts Jews as mice--hence the title--and Germans as cats as a metaphor for how Jews were hunted and killed in accordance with the Nazi Party's planned extermination of all European Jews during World War II. Spiegelman began work on the story as early as 1971, and he published portions of the story between 1980 and 1986 in the underground graphic journal RAW, which he edited with his wife, Françoise Mouly. The first volume of Maus, subtitled My Father Bleeds History, was published to critical acclaim in 1986; the second volume, And Here My...