Art Spiegelman's MetaMaus: A Deep Dive into the Making of a Pulitzer-Winning Graphic Novel

Art Spiegelman's "MetaMaus" offers an exhaustive analysis of his seminal graphic novel "Maus," which won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1980s. The book includes hundreds of preparatory sketches, a DVD with 7,500 sketches, work notebooks, full transcriptions of interviews with his father, and audio commentaries. Spiegelman designed the book to answer persistent questions about why he used comics, mice, and the Holocaust. The publication coincides with an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris until May 21, and a separate show in Angoulême until May 6 featuring Spiegelman's private collection of influences, including the complete original boards of Justin Green's "Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary," which Spiegelman credits as essential to "Maus." The French edition lacks subtitles for audio and video materials. The book also collects rejection letters from publishers in 1983 who dismissed the project as "not attractive" or "conventional."