Chaiyut Pornpongsawadi Pornpongsawadi itibaren Kemal Atatürk Mahallesi, 35672 Menemen/İzmir, 터키 itibaren Kemal Atatürk Mahallesi, 35672 Menemen/İzmir, 터키

This is my first graphic novel (asides from Tin Tin that I read when I was 11 and the Beano when I was 9!) and I loved it. I don't think it matters whether you like graphic novels or not for this book - so if you're like me and thought you wouldn't get along with it, give it a try. This is an incredibly human account of an individual's experience of being a Polish Jew. Despite the fact the 'characters' are portrayed as animals - it is one of the most human and most real-feeling accounts I've seen or read. This is more then a graphic representation of some random story - it's a personal story between a father and his son as well as the father's journey and experience during this time - running away, living in hiding, in the ghetto and finally in Auschwitz. Art Spiegelman also draws himself in - and the process of writing this graphic novel. I think nowadays it is easy to become desensitised to images of the war - bombs, broken bits of body etc from movies and the such like. Somehow, the cartoon portrayal of these real-people's lives seems to make it more real then ever. Parts made me laugh, parts made me cry particularly in Maus II. By the end I felt a real closeness towards both father and son. I think back over the story and remind myself it is real, that what I read on the pages happened to THIS person not just a fictional representation that happened to a fictional person. It is no 'big hero' blockbuster, but a moving story of a very strong minded man who fought to survive.

i am sorry to give this book one measly star. i am a huge admirer of hofstadter's work. i would fanatically recommend any of his books, which are all fantastic and required reading by this point for all intellectually-minded people interested in "putting it all together". i was therefore ecstatic that he should finally publish another book, but crushed upon reading it. the principle point is that though he purports to have some new big answer, this book merely retraces terrain he covered decades ago. it gives us all the same paradigm shifts that he presented throughout his other books, simply collected into one volume and severely abbreviated in scope. it does not put them together. we get no new thinking, no astounding new products of his analytical genius. this book might be great for a first-timer who wants to know what hofstadter's about. but for those of us who've read his prior books and spent years thinking about them and the implications of their concepts, this is a regrettable waste of time. if you haven't read him and you're thinking about reading this, skip it and go straight for "godel, escher, bach". you will be profoundly rewarded.

A friend once demanded i read this book. When I asked what it was about she gave me a funny look and began poking me with it. All I can say is that it is an amazing story and I have never seen a more accurate depiction of a single character growing up