A son, who works as a cartoonist. A father, who has experienced the battlefront, being a prisoner of war, and the hell that is Auschwitz. A father, who shares his experiences even though he thinks no one will care. A son, who based on this account draws a comic called Maus, where the Nazis are cats and the Jews are mice. Predators and vermin.

Maus is stylistically a very understated comic, where simple illustrations do a favour for the story, which doesn't need any colourful embellishments but emerges behind the subtle lines.

Equally a memoir and a comic, there are shades of grey throughout, not just visually. Father Vladek's failing health, his arguments with the new wife, and acting out make the relationship between father and son difficult, but Art still wants to understand his father and how the war affected him. Vladek is not glorified excessively, but he's portrayed realistically as a bit of a wearisome person, who occasionally behaves a little erratically, but to whom the war and the deaths of his first son and first wife have clearly had an influence on. Nobody's perfect, not even those who have been on concentration camps. The experiences are never forgotten, and you may deal with people a little differently than before, but surviving the camp doesn't automatically make anyone a thoroughly good and balanced person.

The anthropomorphism of animals divides opinions, but in this case I thought it was successful and it had a point (unlike in Blacksad, for example). The different "sides" were easily recognisable, whereas in some comics I've read the characters' features are sometimes muddled and therefore difficult to differentiate. With the animal characters Maus also succeeds in narrating an allegorical story of what it means to be a human, and how people sometimes behave like animals (not just the Nazis, but also the desperate prisoners in the concentration camps and ordinary civilians).

Personal experiences push the war under your skin, and you can try to understand the events a little bit better when the oppressed have faces and a unique story to tell. Large numbers are cold and difficult to perceive, but Maus's original approach tells the story of both a survivor and the relationship between a son and a father. Survival is possible, but forgetting is harder.

Maus gets the honour of being the first comic, which I would like to buy and read over and over again. Strongly recommended for also those who avoid comics. Actually, I wish everyone read this. There's lots of material of concentration camps, but the haunting Maus is something else.