10 books to read next
Books Like Maus
If you loved Maus by Art Spiegelman
Maus tells the story of Art Spiegelman's father, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, while Art interviews him in the present day and struggles with their strained relationship. Readers love its unusual form: Jews are drawn as mice and Nazis as cats, which makes a painful history feel strange and direct at once. The pace is patient and conversational, moving between past testimony and present-day scenes, and the tone is dry, honest and often darkly funny. It is a book about memory, guilt and inherited trauma.
Graphic memoirs of the Holocaust
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel
Bechdel's graphic memoir about her father's secrets and her difficult family shares Maus's careful, layered approach to a parent-child relationship. Its literary structure rewards the same close reading.
Barefoot Gen
Keiji Nakazawa
A semi-autobiographical manga of a boy surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Its unflinching depiction of ordinary people caught in catastrophe echoes Maus's refusal to look away.
Survival stories in other forms
Night
Elie Wiesel
A short, spare account of a teenager's experience in the camps, written with the same urgency to bear witness that drives Spiegelman's father's testimony. It is the classic companion text for Maus.
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Narrated by Death, it approaches the Holocaust through ordinary Germans and a Jewish refugee hidden in a town. Its mix of warmth and grief captures Maus's emotional weight.
Stories of family and inherited pain
Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
A young man travels to Ukraine to search for his family's past, with the history of a shtetl told through playful, layered narration. It shares Maus's blend of humour and grief in tracing a family's buried story.
Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid
A modern novel about a fraught relationship between two people shaped by the past. Its sharp, observant tone and moral complexity reward readers who liked how Maus lets its characters be difficult.
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead, JD Jackson
A novel about a boy in an abusive institution and the long shadow it casts over his life. Its quiet, controlled prose handles trauma with the same restraint that makes Maus so affecting.
Go deeper into history
The Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
A firsthand record of life in hiding during the Holocaust. Readers moved by Vladek's testimony in Maus will find the same immediacy and human detail in Anne's own voice.
The librarian of Auschwitz
Salva Rubio, Antonio Iturbe
Based on the true story of a young woman who secretly kept books alive in the camp. Its focus on small acts of resistance complements Maus's account of survival under constant threat.
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