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

This is the second part of the Maus series, starting with Vladek's entrance into Auschwitz. This series, based on true events, transcends the medium in which it is told: a graphic novel. It is unfortunate that many people may be intimidated or make false judgements of the book's contents based on the fact that it is a graphic novel. It's not a children's book, nor is it aimed only at those who enjoy "comic book" type stories.I, personally, am not attracted to the graphic novel genre, but this book is a masterpiece and as important an historical documentation of the Holocaust experience as "Schindler's List" and the "Diary of Anne Frank," as controversial as that sounds. Indeed, I was first introduced to it in an academic context at the college level in an Historical Literature class, if that lends a modicum of validity.Furthermore, Maus goes beyond the concentration camp, elucidating Vladek's post-holocaust experiences in America, with his American-born son, Art Spiegelman, the author of the book. There we see Vladek as a broken, disconnected man shaped by his harrowing holocaust experiences, creating a gulf of understanding and much tension between him and Art. They both struggle to understand one another.But the book is not all gloom and doom. It is narrated often in an amusing way, thanks to the eccentricities of peccadilloes of Vladek.The graphic novel medium makes the tale a quick but powerful read. In fact, I cajoled my mother, someone traditional and somewhat closed-minded about anything different, into reading this and I think she read it in a five hour binge, because she couldn't put it down. Now if that's not an endorsement, I don't know what is.Though the Holocaust has long since past and many survivors are no longer with us, those survivors' experiences are still alive and well in the ripple-effect that has cascaded through their progeny, for better or worse; a truth explored in Maus I and II. This is one of the best pieces of literature I have come across and whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who actively seeks out books that aren't steaming piles of crapola.

Excellent condition. This book is part II of the original “Maus” book. Highly recommend it for adult reading. Would not recommend it for young readers, even though it’s a cartoon.

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.

After reading the first book (Maus) by Mr. Spiegelman, I rushed to get Maus II. His use of cartoon animals to retell the stories related to him by his father who survived the horrors of being a Jew in Europe during WWII is at the same time compelling and captivating. Other books have explained these events in equally gruesome detail, but the first person nature of the tales created a personalized accounting of the worst of humankind and at the same time the astounding spirit of Mr. Spiegelman's father in the face of unspeakable inhumanity.Perhaps one of the more poignant elements in the book was the recurrent theme of Mr. Spiegelman's frustration with his father's behaviors, which I know will ring true with many readers. It took me time to partially understand my own father's mindset as we discussed his military experience in WWII, so it was particularly relatable for me.I wish I were more facile with words to describe the effect of using cartoon animals in telling the story. The medium Mr. Spiegelman employed drew me into the story and kept me reading, in spite of being repulsed by the unconscionable behavior of the camp guards and overseers toward these innocent people. Just suffice to say that the books were difficult to lay down, and I'll likely read them a few more times over the years.Highly recommended, award winning expositions of the worst (and best) of humanity.