Black Dog of Fat

Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir: An American Son Uncovers his Armenian Past by Peter Balakian. Tenth Anniversary paperback edition first published 2009 by Basic Books.

New York Times Notable Book, Winner of the Pen/Albrand Award

From 1914-23, the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of modern Turkey, carried out the systematic state-organized policy of physical annihilation of its indigenous Greek and Armenian civilian populations. I was aware of some of the history of the Armenian genocide from my familiarity of the Greek genocide as a descendant of Asia Minor (on my maternal grandmother’s side)—but this does not make a book like Black Dog of Fate easy to get through and I struggled to finish it. It is not only about the atrocities committed at the hands of the Turkish government-- but it is also a beautiful book about discovering one’s heritage. Not an easy read but an important one.

The Complete Maus

Title: The Complete Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
Author: Art Spiegelman
Publication date: 1973, 1986
Number of pages: 296
Genre: graphic novel

Geographical Setting: Poland, Auschwitz concentration camp, upstate New York

Time Period: late 1930s, the Second World War, 1970s, 1980s
Series: two books in this collection, “My Father Bleeds History” & “And Here My Troubles Began”

Plot Summary: Spiegelman, born after WWII, interviews his father about his experiences as a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Poland. In the first book, Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, recounts his life in pre-war Poland and marriage to Art’s mother and his enlistment in the army. Tales of life in the ghetto and their hidings as the Final Solution is put into effect by the Nazis are depicted in Spiegelman’s drawings. The second book depicts his father’s experiences in a concentration camp and his survival and new life in America. Spiegelman uses animal as characters with the Jews depicted as mice and the Germans as cats.

Subject Headings: the Holocaust, survival, Hitler, Nazis, the Jews, concentration camps, biography, memoir

Appeal: biographical, father and son relationship, historical fiction, Holocaust literature, effects of war on families, graphic novel, comic book, Young Adult Literature, suicide by a parent, winner of Pulitzer Prize, survivor guilt, anthropomorphic characters

If you liked the Maus books, you might enjoy: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis- graphic novel about a young Iranian girl’s life during the Islamic Revolution through the Iran-Iraq war. E. Tina Tito’s Teen Witnesses to the Holocaust, Liberation: Teens in the Concentration Camps and the Teen Soldiers Who Liberated Them.