Holocaust novel “Maus” tops Amazon’s best-sellers list after removal from Tennessee school district

The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus about the Holocaust, which was removed from curriculum by a Tennessee school district over offensive language and a nude image, has topped Amazon.com’s best-sellers’ list.

Art Spiegelman’s poignant tale about his parents’ survival against Nazi atrocities went from No. 12 on Amazon’s list on Friday evening and was No. 1 by Sunday night.

As of Monday morning, “The Complete Maus” held the No. 2 spot among Amazon’s best sellers in books. “Maus I,” an earlier published book that is the first part of “The Complete Maus,” was also the No. 3 best-selling book on Amazon.

In the category of comics and graphic novels, four editions of “Maus,” in hardcover and paperback versions, were in the top five bestsellers on Amazon as of Monday morning.

“Maus,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, draws from Spiegelman’s parents’ experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. It depicts Jews as mice and cats as Nazis.

Some recent reviews of the versions credit the recent controversy for its purchase. “Thank you, McMinn County SB, for being the impetus to discover this masterpiece,” one reviewer, identified as a “WWII era history buff of many years”, wrote. “It will be a treasured addition to my WWII library.”

One Tennessee local has set up a GoFundMe in order to purchase more copies of Maus for students who have since been deprived of the book.  At this stage, $78,000 has been raised.

The McMinn County Board of Education voted 10-0 to remove Maus on January 10, despite educators arguing that the graphic novel is an ‘anchor text’ in eighth-grade English language arts instruction and the centerpiece of a months-long study of the Holocaust.