Maus autobiography vs biography

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Combining the unlikely elements of comic books and the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman's Maus is a truly unique work of art.

As a medium, comics are generally associated with superheroes and wacky characters; at first glance, using a comic book format for a topic as terrible as the Holocaust might appear to be in poor taste. Yet Maus ultimately succeeds in portraying the horrors of that event and speaking to the shadows that it continues to cast on survivors and their children.

Just as Maus defies conventions in its combination of medium and subject, it also defies definition in terms of genre.

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When it was first published, the New York Times placed the book on the fiction bestseller list, but Spiegelman requested that it be moved to the non-fiction list. On other occasions, however, the author has called Maus a work of fiction.

Indeed, the book encompasses many genres simultaneously, and r