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The Complete Maus Paperback – October 2, 2003
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length296 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPENGUIN
- Publication dateOctober 2, 2003
- Dimensions0.7 x 6.3 x 9.06 inches
- ISBN-109780141014081
- ISBN-13978-0141014081
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Product details
- ASIN : 0141014083
- Publisher : PENGUIN (October 2, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 296 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780141014081
- ISBN-13 : 978-0141014081
- Item Weight : 10.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 0.7 x 6.3 x 9.06 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #102,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,358 in Arts & Photography (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the story engaging and informative. They appreciate the well-done illustrations and captivating comic strips. The book provides insights into the Holocaust and is a good way for teaching children about the topic. Readers find the narrative intimate and personal, with humor and candor. Overall, it's a great read for all ages.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the story engaging and heartbreaking. They describe it as a true account of one man's survival during a major historical event. The graphic novel tells two stories, one set in the 1930s and 1940s, and captures the harrowing guilt survivors faced. The story flows well and shows the horrors of the time poignantly.
"...It addresses the topic with excellent candor wrapped into an incredibly engaging story of one man’s survival of these horrific events." Read more
"The Complete Maus is a graphic novel that tells two stories, one set in 1930s and 1940s Europe, and the other in roughly present day 1980s America,..." Read more
"...It is a graphic novel so the tale is told in pictures as well as words which takes some work to read, and the subject matter is dark and the author..." Read more
"...It isn't just a several-layered story. It's also an implicit archaeology of memory that, layer by layer, uncovers what it means to be a creature..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's art quality. They find the illustrations well-done and the storyline moving. The book is described as a visual tale in a straightforward context that allows readers to see the horrors of what happened. It's an amazing work of art and while tormenting, they are very happy they read it.
"...My Summary (5/5): Overall I was incredibly impressed with this graphic novel and the amazing job it did blending the past of the Holocaust with the..." Read more
"...It is a graphic novel so the tale is told in pictures as well as words which takes some work to read, and the subject matter is dark and the author..." Read more
"...The story line and the drawings are incredible, succeeding in saying entire volumes in the abbreviated way characteristic of this genre...." Read more
"...Difficult to capture what Spiegelman did here. "Maus" is so honest, so lucid, so scary and real; quite unlike any other book I know...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's insights into the Holocaust. They find it an engaging way to learn about the subject matter, especially for children. The unusual premise is highly effective and helps readers understand the complex dynamics and lives of those who fought to survive. The story also explores the ingenuity and cleverness of Holocaust survivors. Overall, customers describe the book as heartwarming, poignant, and important.
"...They were excellent questions and we had some very good and thoughtful discussions as a family because of this book...." Read more
"...being sent to the ghettos in large part due to Vladek’s determined, clever, resourceful fortitude. They hid in bunkers with dirt and mice...." Read more
"...It has ideas and words, opinions and personal points of view. Mostly it has one person telling us another persons story and how it made him feel...." Read more
"A good way for teaching 10+ children the truth about the HOLICOST." Read more
Customers find the book's content engaging. They appreciate the creative effort to tell his father's experience, which gives an important perspective. The narrative style is intimate and personal, portraying the story of his father and all the characters involved. Readers appreciate the candor and how it addresses the topic with excellent candor. It shows the struggle between father and son through the lens of a typical familial relationship. The book is full of details about what many Jewish people experienced during the Holocaust.
"...No, not at all. It addresses the topic with excellent candor wrapped into an incredibly engaging story of one man’s survival of these horrific..." Read more
"...The book is full of details about what many Jewish people experienced during the war...." Read more
"...Maus" is so honest, so lucid, so scary and real; quite unlike any other book I know...." Read more
"...and his own in this digestible graphic novel that was appropriate for this audience. That being so, Art was still brutally honest...." Read more
Customers enjoy the humor in the book. They find the comic format pleasing and honest. The story is described as poetic, poignant, witty, and emotionally powerful.
"...It has humor, too, as befits a "comic book" and one that captures so vividly such infamy...." Read more
"...The illustrations are well done and the storyline is sad, funny, and reminder of the resilient human spirit...." Read more
"...Cats as captors of the Mice who are persecuted. Black humor and reality...." Read more
"Cartoons make the content even more poignant...." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read and understand for all ages. They say it introduces young people to the tragedies of an earlier time. The story is written in a way that children can grasp basic concepts without any difficulty. However, some older readers may find it difficult to read in dim lighting.
"...It's written so that a child can grasp the basic concepts and various components without any need of understanding the atrocities involved in any..." Read more
"Horrifying but so important to read...." Read more
"...This book should be required reading in every high school." Read more
"...in America might think, the book is absolutely appropriate for any adolescent in highschool. Junior high if they are a bit more mature...." Read more
Customers find the book heartbreaking, disturbing, and emotionally difficult to read. Some find it compelling and moving, while others describe it as depressing and draining.
"...as well as words which takes some work to read, and the subject matter is dark and the author does a good job of presenting it very clearly without..." Read more
"...and then shortly after it was banned in Texas because of inappropriate content...." Read more
"...Maus" is so honest, so lucid, so scary and real; quite unlike any other book I know...." Read more
"haunting, beautiful book" Read more
Customers have different views on the book's readability. Some find it easy to understand and digest, with a graphic novel format that makes it quick and interesting. Others find it hard to read, with a lot of text and information, and difficult to describe.
"...This was not an easy book to write, nor an easy story for him to hear...." Read more
"...Using the image of mice instead of humans makes the graphic novel easier to digest, since otherwise the reality of what happened would be incredibly..." Read more
"I deducted one star from my review because this particular printing is difficult to read...." Read more
"...It’s stark and straightforward. There are those who want to ban this and other books giving this story an immense value. Be a rebel, buy this book." Read more
Reviews with images
A great story told in a creative way
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2022Series Info/Source: This is the complete Maus graphic novel. I got a copy of this as a Christmas Gift.
Thoughts: The dense writing style and heavy lined black and white artwork were a bit intimidating at first but once I got started reading the story I didn’t even notice it or find it hard to read. This story is completely engrossing. Spiegelman does an amazing job of alternating between the past and the present and recounting the intense and sad story of his father living through the Holocaust. What amazed me is he did in a way that was incredibly impactful without ever being too dark.
I was completely engrossed in this book from page one. And I quickly grew to love Maus’s father and his family. I was continually surprised how much of Maus’s father’s survival was because of how resourceful his father was. His father is extremely adaptable and takes on every chance he has to learn a new skill, this (along with quite a bit of luck) is the number one thing that leads to him surviving the nightmare of the Holocaust.
Is this an uplifting book? Not really, it is more of a cautionary tale. Even though his father survives the Holocaust, the effects continue to echo through his life many years later. The people who survived the events of the Holocaust have to live with the Holocaust forever in their minds and this continues to affect their families generations later. So much thought and skill went into telling this story; it was just incredibly well done.
There is some irony to the fact that I asked for this for Christmas and then shortly after it was banned in Texas because of inappropriate content. I don’t know how to tell people this…but the whole Holocaust was inappropriate and it would be really hard to tell an accurate story of what happened without going into some of the violence and death that happened.
Is the violence and death presented in an excessive way in this book? Most definitely not. Discussions of the gas chambers and killing of children in the streets of ghettos are addressed matter of factly. Hiding in piles of dead people’s shoes and witnessing the aftermath of a gas chamber are things that really happened. At the time these people were trying to survive one atrocity after another; the atrocities were fact and they are presented as such in this book. People did what they could to keep themselves and their families safe.
Should you have your five year old read this? Well do you want to explain the Holocaust to your 5 year old? I might hold off for a bit. We talked about the Holocaust with my son in late elementary/early middle school. He actually checked out this very book from his middle school library and had A LOT of questions for us after he read it. They were excellent questions and we had some very good and thoughtful discussions as a family because of this book. This is a incredibly valuable way to learn about the Holocaust. I think it should be available for everyone in middle school and older to read.
My Summary (5/5): Overall I was incredibly impressed with this graphic novel and the amazing job it did blending the past of the Holocaust with the effect it continues to have on people’s day to day lives. I would recommend to middle grade and up readers because the Holocaust is a complicated topic and kids need to be a certain age in order to begin to comprehend cruelty on this scale. Is this book excessively violent or “Inappropriate”? No, not at all. It addresses the topic with excellent candor wrapped into an incredibly engaging story of one man’s survival of these horrific events.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2020The Complete Maus is a graphic novel that tells two stories, one set in 1930s and 1940s Europe, and the other in roughly present day 1980s America, when and where the book was being written.
The first story is one that breaks the fourth wall in that it’s the story of the author, Art Spiegelman, and his father, the elderly Vladek Spiegelman. Art is a cartoonist interviewing his father about what it was like to be a Polish Jew during the buildup to WWII. He tells the story of his (as well as his wife Anja’s) trials and ultimate survival of the war and the Holocaust. As the story progresses, we discover that Vladek has remarried to another survivor named Mala in the years since Anja passed away in 1968. But that relationship is a complicated one (to say the least) as Vladek is a deeply flawed man in his old age. These flaws cause rifts between Art and Vladek as well. This first story zeroes in on these complications between Vladek, Art, and Mala.
The second story is a love story between Vladek and Anja as a young couple facing the dangerous and genocidal landscape of WWII Europe. Throughout the late 1930s until the war ended in 1945, the two relied on each other for the strength to survive. Even when things were at their most bleak, while both were imprisoned in Auschwitz, they managed to get messages back-and-forth to each other, and Vladek even managed to get his wife some food here and there. Once the war ended and they both escaped with their lives, Vladek found Anja again back in their hometown and they made a life together, eventually having a son named Art in 1950. The book is full of details about what many Jewish people experienced during the war. Anja came from a wealthy family, and Vladek was a successful business owner himself. But they all started losing their businesses and money as the landscape started to change. Vladek and Anja survived being sent to the ghettos in large part due to Vladek’s determined, clever, resourceful fortitude. They hid in bunkers with dirt and mice. In Auschwitz, Anja nearly died of starvation, and Vladek nearly of typhus. They were both tortured and beaten by Nazis, and Vladek was nearly murdered by Nazis on several occasions. They both lost nearly their entire families to the Nazis, including their first son Richieu, their parents, siblings, cousins and friends.
The two stories come together near the end as the timelines merge. That’s when the point is really driven home about how Vladek’s experiences in the war affected his psychology in later years. Although Vladek is a sympathetic character in his youth (smart, clever, resourceful and someone the reader really roots for), he is not depicted that way as an elderly man. This is a big part of the struggle for Art, attempting to reconcile the cheap, stubborn, argumentative (and sometimes racist) elderly man with the man he was in his youth.
Vladek wasn’t the only one who suffered as a result of the trauma experienced during the war. Anja had suffered from some sort of affliction that saw her hospitalized before the war, but she committed suicide in 1968. And Art battled the ghost of his dead brother Richieu, whom he had never met. When it seemed that a being sent to a work or death camp was imminent, Anja’s sister thought she could get her kids to safety in the countryside, so Anja and Vladek sent their very young son Richieu with her, hoping he’d have a better chance of surviving. Ultimately when she and the kids were hunted by the Nazis, she killed herself and all the kids to prevent them from suffering a more painful death upon capture. And even though Richieu was dead before Art was ever born, he lived with his dead brother’s ghost ever-present as he grew up in Richieu’s shadow.
In the book, people are drawn as animals. For example, Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are cats. I don’t know whether it makes the work more or less impressive as a result, but I almost completely forgot that they were mice and cats within a couple of pages. What makes this book great for me is the storytelling, not the metaphor.
This is the story of two lovers who survived one of the most terrible times in human history. They relied on each other, and even under the worst of circumstances, they persevered together. And it was also the story of the aftermath, the damage done and the trauma inflicted upon those who did manage to survive and the generations that followed.
I’ve never been a big graphic novel fan, but this is a fine piece of work.
This book made me think of a poem written by Leonard Cohen poem from his book “Let Us Compare Mythologies” –
'Lovers'
During the first pogrom they
Met behind the ruins of their homes –
Sweet merchants trading: her love
For a history full of poems.
And at the hot ovens they
Cunningly managed a brief
Kiss before the soldier came
To knock out her golden teeth.
And in the furnace itself
As the flames flamed higher.
He tried to kiss her burning breasts
As she burned in the fire.
Later he often wondered:
Was their barter completed?
While men around him plundered.
And knew he had been cheated.
Top reviews from other countries
- Shawn BishopReviewed in Canada on July 1, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
This book is well worth the money. I found it very compelling reading and educational to boot. A full length graphic novel that not only confirms what we thought we knew about the holocaust, but forces you to think about all the people that were affected. Very deserving of the prizes and awards this books has received.
- QuillReviewed in Turkey on June 27, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars 👍
good product and delivery
- SujReviewed in India on October 13, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read classic, not for the faint-hearted
Where do I begin with a masterpiece like this? An unflinching, honest look at one of the worst atrocities in human history. Told through the narrative framing of a son interviewing his father who lived through Auschwitz.
The unfolding of the father's story is set against his present day personality, the friction between them, the empty presence of his mother and intergenerational trauma- really, nothing about this book is easy to read and I'm grateful it's entirely in greyscale. The anthromorphic characters add an extra layer to the story. The beginning of volume 2 has the author writing through his writer's block following the success of the first volume, which was one of highlights for me.
Highly recommend this to everyone.
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential graphic novel reading
After watching Nerdwriter1's video essay of Maus I was very interested in buying the graphic novel, and honestly that video couldn't fully describe the joy I felt reading it.
It's been a while since I've read Maus so bear with me while I recount what I can remember about it.
Maus follows Art Spiegelman interviewing his father Vladek Spiegelman about how he survived the holocaust. The characters, including Art himself, are drawn as anthropomorphic animals in a style that's very unique. Each animal corresponds to a certain group in the graphic novel: the Jewish as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, and the Americans as dogs (I don't remember if other groups like the British are depicted).
This stylistic choice is very important: it's reclaiming the style of propaganda that the Nazi's used to depict the Jewish (in particular how they dehumanized the Jewish by depicting them as pitch black rats. The mice in Maus are the opposite being the colour white).
The story as a whole is Vladek's experience during Europe's most horrific time, his other stories like how he met Art's mother, with Art's experience and stories coming in from time to time.
In fact, one part that focuses on Art's experience is one of my favourite parts of the whole comic, which is the start of the Time Flies chapter until about page 207. It's a very personal and raw look at Art's perspective on his family's life, on Maus itself a bit, the dogged interviewers and greedy licensers he had to deal with, he solace when going to his therapist, then it capped off with a lonely sigh as the tape played Vladek's last issue with his wife and then continued with the story.
The whole comic is honest, real, and poignantly written, and the beautiful ink pen drawings add so much to the story. I won't bore you with a full analysis, I'll just say it's absolutely beautiful and now I want to read it all over again.
(Also, it upsets me dearly that some people would ban Maus from school libraries cause it has swastikas...in a WW2 story. Yeah. Any school that has Maus on their shelves deserves my respect)
- vinceReviewed in the Netherlands on April 1, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars good
Due to the condition description as "good" I was worried this was a used item. It looks or is brand new, I cannot see that anyone ever touched this book.
Great item, thanks.