Acclaimed as a quotquiet triumphquot and a quotbrutally moving work of artquot the first volume of Art Spiegelmans Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegelman a Jewish survivor of Hitlers Europe and his son a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father his fathers terrifying story and History itself Its form the cartoon the Nazis are cats the Jews mice succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described approaching as it does the unspeakable through the diminutive As the New York Times Book Review commentedquot it is a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividnessan unfolding literary eventquotThis long-awaited sequel subtitled And Here My Troubles Began moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills Genuinely tragic and comic by turns it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium Maus ties together two powerful stories Vladeks harrowing tale of survival against all odds delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps and the authors account of his tortured relationship with his aging fatherVladeks troubled remarriage minor arguments between father and son and lifes everyday disappointments are all set against a backdrop of history too large to pacify At every level this is the ultimate survivors tale -- and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.
