#1 in Comics
Maus
- 295
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- Pulitzer Prize
- Best foreign work published in Spain
- Special Prize of the Jury of the Max und Moritz Award
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Our view
“Maus” tells a Holocaust survivor’s story as a comic of mice and cats, and the distance of drawing makes the horror clearer, not milder. Spiegelman builds it from interviews with his father, so it is as much about what those years left in the man as about the events themselves. It is hard reading by its nature, and the two parts are best taken together.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Maus, often published as Maus: A Survivor's Tale, is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodern techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats and Poles as pigs. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 9.1 across 531 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 78% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Comics average of 8.5. That is how 9.0 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 9.0 | 163 | 31% |
| Hardcover | 9.1 | 368 | 69% |
Frequently asked
How long is Maus?
It has 295 pages — longer than 60% of the ranked books in Comics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Comics — with scores between 8.3 and 8.5, closest to this book.
