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"I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" - Art Spiegelman

�Maus, II: And Here My Troubles Began� continues with the painful story of �Vladek Spiegelman� from where �Maus I� left off but in a more intense manner. ‘Maus, II: And Here My Troubles Began� is the completion of a masterpiece by Art Spiegelman. The book delves further deep into the everlasting struggle that his family had to go through even after his parents surviving the Nazi death camps and the lingering effects of the holocaust on his family, which makes the private pains of the author more raw and shocking to the reader.

‘Maus, II� chronicles the life of ‘Vladek Spiegelman� and his wife starting from the days of their imprisonment in Auschwitz. The way in which the author is concentrating his narratives on to the sheer tenacity shown by ‘Vladek� for surviving each horror that he and his wife face inside the walls of Auschwitz is brilliant. Instead of going much into the greater portrayals of the slaughters and atrocities of the death camp this approach of highlighting the individual perseverance of ‘Vladek Spiegelman� as a survivalist makes ‘Maus II� a great attempt by the author in his quest for understanding his father and his past. This approach makes it more personal and more enjoyable to the reader. This also shows how the character of ‘Vladek� was influenced in his life following the ‘survival� after witnessing so much death of loved ones and experiencing humiliation, physical and mental strain, starvation and trauma.

‘Maus II� also goes to greater depths in portraying Art’s troubled relationship with his father and his difficulty in understanding what his parents really went through before his birth. Some of the imagery in the cartoon panels � like those where the mice portrayed with open mouths as if they are silently screaming - can literally haunt the reader for days.

If this story was told in a conventional narrative format it still would have been painful; but it wouldn’t have conveyed the plain naked monstrosity of what ‘Vladek Spiegelman� had to go through during the war and for the rest of his life to the reader in the way it does with these powerful cartoon panels.

Note: I cannot as a casual reviewer do full justice to what this book will be for a reader just through my words. It is something that is to be experienced by yourself; only one thing is certain, if you get connected to this book as a reader it will take some time to recover from its influence.