Rat tribe

Maus

Angoulême, Eisner, Harvey, a grand slam of the three major international comic awards
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, bringing comics into the pantheon of serious literature
Time Magazine's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books from 1923-2005
A documentary about the Nazi ethnic cleansing, using animals as metaphors for humans
Tells the collective trauma inflicted on the Jewish people by World War II: a true "survivor's" story
Translated into 39 languages, with global sales exceeding ten million copies
Pompidou and MoMA Museum of Modern Art held original art exhibitions for it
13 years later, a hardcover reappearance of the complete handwritten Simplified Chinese edition
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◇Editor's Recommendation
◎A world-renowned graphic novel classic, honored with numerous international literary and comic awards
The creation of Maus spanned 13 years. Since the publication of its first volume, it has received countless accolades from critics and readers worldwide, successively winning prestigious literary awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and a nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as top international comic awards like Angoulême, Eisner, and Harvey. In 2022, the author of this book, Art Spiegelman, with Maus as his representative work, won the "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" award from the National Book Foundation.
In 1992, Maus won the Pulitzer Prize, known as the "Nobel Prize of journalism," a feat unprecedented and unmatched in the comic world. It prompted more adults to pay attention to and appreciate comics as an art form with endless potential. As a work that brought comics into the realm of serious literature, Maus has consistently maintained an unsurpassed status and influence.
◎Using the rise and fall of one family to show the suffering history of an entire nation, tearing off the fig leaf of human nature with a detached and even cruel attitude, and condemning the ultimate devastation of war on humanity
The protagonist of Maus is the author's father, Vladek, a Polish Jew. He escaped the Jewish ghetto with his wife and survived the gas chambers of Auschwitz, but could not enjoy a peaceful latter half of his life in peacetime. He became opinionated, selfish, and harsh, tormenting his family. Maus employs a dual narrative structure: one storyline recounts the father's experiences during World War II, and the other depicts the daily interactions between father and son in the present. These two lines are intertwined in an orderly manner. The ultimate question posed by the entire story is: As a "survivor" of ethnic cleansing, does living equate to winning and dying to losing? Did the Vladek family truly survive the war? Can humans truly escape the shadow of war?
Over 3 million Polish Jews were massacred by the Nazis during World War II, and even surviving against overwhelming odds cannot describe the horror. However, Maus does not deliberately sensationalize this cruelty. It refrains from moralizing about the Nazis' inhuman acts or the father's various survival methods, nor does it present overly disturbing images. The author consistently presents everything with a calm tone, refraining from intentionally portraying the victims as miserable, and combines this with rigorous historical research, greatly enhancing the objectivity and authenticity of the narrative.
◎Using animals as metaphors for humans, imbuing the story with unimaginable expressive power through symbolism; the stark and rough woodcut style echoes the core of the story
In Maus, Jews are depicted as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. Additionally, there are other symbolic animals like frogs, fish, moths, deer, and even small mice with cat-like markings, which readers can discover for themselves. To maintain the seriousness and non-fictional nature of the book, the author revised his drafts multiple times, ultimately ensuring that, aside from their animalistic head features, his characters had human-like body forms. In their behavior, they were even more human than humans. The resulting irony greatly enhanced the artistic expressiveness of Maus.
Maus has a woodcut-like art style, with concise lines and full compositions. While this unrefined artwork might not immediately appeal to readers, it is the most suitable style for this book and the result of the author's careful consideration. Its starkness and power better suit the work's calm, objective narrative approach and its core message of condemning war and frankly confronting history. At the same time, the paneling in Maus gives the story a sense of dynamism. Each panel is like a constantly changing camera shot, capturing the characters' actions and expressions as images, transforming the story told on paper into a drama unfolding before the reader's eyes. The resulting immersive reading experience is something traditional documentary literature cannot achieve.
◎A work that has been continuously discussed and maintained its popularity for 30 years since its publication, a work worth recommending and discussing no matter how much time passes
Since its publication, "Maus" has generated continuous discussion. Beyond the debate in critical circles about whether it qualifies as non-fiction, some have questioned whether the use of animals as metaphors in "Maus" indirectly reinforces prejudice and strengthens racial divides, and whether the author's frank and direct portrayal of his father's character unfairly denigrates Jewish people.
The second part of Maus still has no Hebrew version; there were protests in Poland against the publication of Maus; Russia once ordered Maus to be taken off shelves due to Nazi symbols on its cover; in 2022, a high school in Tennessee, USA, removed Maus from its student art curriculum, prompting fierce condemnation from Neil Gaiman and others... These controversies lead people to reflect more deeply on war, race, and humanity, which is precisely the significance of Maus.
◎The main text is entirely handwritten, personally authorized and reviewed by the author, and produced as a collectible Simplified Chinese edition with globally uniform dimensions and cover design.
To create a new, more collectible edition of Maus, we specifically requested a hardcover binding from the author, and the design for the hardcover's inner cover was also provided by the author himself. To faithfully preserve the original characteristics of the work, we insisted on handwriting the entire text. The handwritten content exceeds 80,000 characters. After prolonged refinement, we strived to harmonize text and image, and to make the text participate in the visual expression as a symbol: by varying font style, size, and arrangement, we highlight the speaker's tone and emotion. From every character, every punctuation mark, we endeavor to contribute to finding a new artistic life for Maus in China.
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◇Content Introduction
Maus tells the true story of the author's parents, recounting how Jews escaped the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and rebuilt their lives after the war.
The entire book uses animals as metaphors for people: mice represent Jews, cats represent Germans, pigs represent Poles, and dogs represent Americans. With a stark brushstroke, heavy lines, and full composition, it faithfully recreates the cruelty of war from both the perspectives of a participant and an observer, and its lifelong impact on survivors.
This is a true "survivor's" story - not only of how Jews survived the war, but also of how they and their descendants survived the shadows of the past.
As the only comic work in history to win the Pulitzer Prize, Maus brought comics into the realm of serious literature, a significant achievement.
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◇Media Recommendations
A monumental achievement, quiet, moving, simple—impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve through any medium other than comics.
—The Washington Post
An epic story told in small pictures.
—The New York Times
This survivor's story is raw and real, unvarnished, unavoidable. People often say that the Holocaust, like nuclear war, terrified artists' imaginations, but Spiegelman overthrew that theory.
—The Independent
Spiegelman depicts Nazis as cats, Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs, but they are all more human than humans.
—The Times
The most moving and successful account of the Holocaust.
—The Wall Street Journal
A profoundly powerful work of art.
—The Boston Globe
When life is reduced to a struggle for survival, and the meaning of trust and betrayal extends beyond their original scope, how do people cope? Maus continues the tradition of Aesop and Orwell, bringing readers a profound emotional impact and powerful resonance, even though its subject matter has been documented in numerous texts. This work of art is brilliant, powerful, and moving, precisely because it is completely devoid of deliberate emotional manipulation, making its effect even greater.
—TimeOut Magazine
Maus is an unputdownable book, you don't even want to put it down when you sleep. When two little mice make love, you are moved; when they suffer, you cry. Slowly read this little story made up of disaster, humor and everyday trifles, and you will be captivated by the fate of this Jewish family, caught in a tender and charming melody. When you finally finish the book, you will feel so wistful to leave that incredible world.
—Umberto Eco (Great Italian scholar and writer of the 20th century)
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◇Awards and Honors
1988, Angoulême International Comics Festival "Award for Outstanding Foreign Comic" (Maus, Volume One)
1990, Guggenheim Fellowship (USA)
1990, Max & Moritz Prize "Special Prize" (Germany)
1991, National Book Critics Circle Award Nomination (USA)
1992, Pulitzer Prize "Special Citation in Letters"
1992, Eisner Award "Best Archival Collection/Project"
1992, Harvey Award "Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work"
1993, Angoulême International Comics Festival "Award for Outstanding Foreign Comic" (Maus, Volume Two)
2005, Time Magazine's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books from 1923-2005
2005, Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People
2011, Angoulême International Comics Festival "Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême"
2022, National Book Foundation "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters"

2023-01-01

湖南美术出版社

the new wave

296

9787535698100