Tuesday 10 March 2015

Maus by Art Spiegelman

I finished this book weeks ago, but I was not ready to write a review. The punch in my stomach was still strong and bleeding; a book that you can only pretend to not have read to maybe try to forget it.
But let's start from the beginning. Maus (the German for "mouse") is a graphic novel, the main characters are indeed Mice and Cats, in an eternal fight for survival.
But soon you would forget about the identity of the characters and you will just be left with the "ass-holes vs innocent fight". That the book is about the Holocaust you will need just few pages to understand. The book is  actually a memoir of Vladek Spiegelman, the father of Art, a survivor of Auschwitz
You think it has been said already everything about it? Well, I personally never get tired of reading of such an absurd and WRONG period of our times, but, in general, this book will still tell you something you haven't found elsewhere.

The graphic makes the words stronger and more incisive, and the narrative will just tell you things without any filter. No imagination, no suggestions here are possible.The truth, nude and crude as it is.

I think this book is important for the new generations, that won't have the direct narrative from fathers and grandfathers, and that won't probably have that curiosity to understand a period too far from them. This is a good way to give the message and to keep the memory up for one of the worst and tragic period of our history.

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