Metamaus by Art Spiegelman

I learned so much in this book. I knew that Maus had affected me deeply and that it wasn't just to do with the subject matter, but in MetaMaus I felt I really came to an understanding of the level of craft Spiegelman put into his work. Spiegelman speaks about the different levels of his books, the overt subject of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, but also the framing narrative of intergenerational misuderstandings and conflict, that being a survivor of the Holocaust doesn't make you perfect, and of the deep reasons for the use of animal models that reflected how Nazis themselves propagandised about Jews. I learned about the symbolism and movement of the panels across each page and Spiegelman's own struggle to express his ambivalism about his family history. I didn't think I could respect Spiegelman more that I did, but I do now. A wonderful piece, not just about Maus but about the history and methodology of the comic medium.

Annexed by Sharon Dogar

Dogar imagines life within the hidden flat that housed Anne Frank and her family from the point of view from the boy she fell in love with, Peter van Pels. Dogan works with the fact that a diary is a subjective piece of writing, and that Anne Frank was a young teenager, and constructs a narrative that is very interesting but without the compelling power of Frank's own diary Kitty. When we read Frank's diary we read the actual words of a very ordinary young girl destined to die in the Bergen-Belsen death camp, to be survived only by her father and her words which would ring out as an appeal against race hatred and mass killings throughout the years since. I think Dogar's book is best when she is imagining Peter's experiences in Auschwitz and the final death march to Mauthausen, and the title is clever too as the Nazi's systematically annexed Europe 'cleansing' it of 'undesirables' as they went.