Book Club Guide

Maus

by Art Spiegelman · 1991 · Biography & Memoir

Key themes

How we receive and pass on extreme trauma
The limits of representation
Identity across generations

About this book

Spiegelman recounts his father Vladek's experience as a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, told through interviews in the present day and rendered as comics in which Jews are mice and Nazis are cats. The two-volume work won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust in any medium, as well as a meditation on the act of bearing witness.

Published in two volumes (1986 and 1991), Maus is based on interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father, a Holocaust survivor. It won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Discussion questions

Jews are depicted as mice and Nazis as cats — an allegorical choice Spiegelman was uncertain about throughout. Does this visual metaphor help or hinder the transmission of the historical reality?
The book is as much about Art's relationship with his father Vladek as it is about the Holocaust itself. What is Spiegelman saying about the difficulty of communication between generations shaped by trauma?
Vladek is a survivor but not an admirable character in many ways — he is racist, difficult, emotionally withholding. How does this complexity change the book's emotional register?
Spiegelman interrupts the story to show himself struggling with how to draw and tell it — including a 'Meta Maus' section. What does this self-reflexivity add — does it weaken the narrative or strengthen it?
Maus won the Pulitzer Prize — the first graphic novel to do so. What does this recognition say about the form, and does reading Maus change how you think about what comics can do?