Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale

David Andrew Loman (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1986

Places

United States (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Graphic / Comic

Resources

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Art Spiegelman’s celebrated graphic narrative

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale

tells two intertwined stories: the desperate struggle of his parents, Jews living in Poland in the 1930s and 1940s, to survive the Nazis’ Final Solution; and his own difficult, frequently adversarial relationship with his father in 1980s New York State. A masterpiece of comics art,

Maus

was published serially in the 1980s and early 1990s and collected in two volumes, the first published in 1986 and the second in 1991; lacking a category that might include

Maus

, the Pulitzer board conferred a special Pulitzer on Spiegelman in 1992.

To those readers only superficially acquainted with ambitious or serious comics – a large category that included the vast majority of Maus’s earliest readers – the book provokes and

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4080 words

Citation: Loman, David Andrew. "Maus: A Survivor's Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 January 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14570, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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