Artist: Art Spiegelman
The first and only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, Maus is the powerful and emotional story of Art Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. Alternating between the past (Vladek’s imprisonment in a concentration camp, the death of his son Richieu, and his survivor’s guilt) and the present (Spiegelman’s interviews with his father, the often agonizing process of creation), Maus doesn’t just present the reader with the gritty talking points; it takes an active role in the conversation. Spiegelman’s use of animals to portray human characters (Germans are cats, Jews are mice) effectively forces readers to confront their own ideas of racism and hatred. A game-changing, genre-defining classic, Maus is more than a personal story of survival, “it also stands among the best works of Holocaust literature in any form” wrote TIME.