Maus

Maus is a graphic novel completed in 1991 by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. In it, Spiegelman interviews his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The book makes use of postmodern techniques—most strikingly in its depiction of races of humans as different kinds of animals, with Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs. Maus has been labeled as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In the "present" frame tale timeline, beginning in 1978 in Rego Park, New York, Spiegelman talks with his father about his Holocaust experiences, gathering material for the Maus project he is preparing. In the "past", Spiegelman depicts his father's experiences, starting in the years leading up to World War II. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the absence of his mother who committed suicide when he was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of Auschwitz. Formally, Spiegelman struggles with problems of presentation, working with a strained animal metaphor that is intended to self-destruct. The book uses a minimalist drawing style while displaying innovation in its page and panel layouts, pacing, and structure.

A three-page 1972 strip by Spiegelman, also called "Maus", was the impetus for Spiegelman to interview his father about his war experiences. The recorded interviews became the basis for the graphic novel, which Spiegelman begun in 1978. Maus was serialized from 1980 until 1991 as an insert in Raw, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly. Maus has been published in dozens of languages, and has won numerous awards. In the English-speaking world, it was one of the first works of comics to receive academic attention. It is credited with helping the comics medium gain greater respect among the public, and helped establish and popularize the graphic novel.