In the Shadow of No Towers

For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofMaus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political.In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreakingMaus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda. He responded in the way he knows best. In an oversized, two-page-spread format that echoes the scale of the earliest newspaper comics (which Spiegelman says brought him solace after the attacks), he relates his experience of the national tragedy in drawings and text that conveywith his singular artistry and his characteristic provocation, outrage, and witthe unfathomable enormity of the event itself, the obvious and insidious effects it had on his life, and the extraordinary, often hidden changes that have been enacted in the name of post-9/11 national security and that have begun to undermine the very foundation of American democracy. From the Hardcover edition.

Art Spiegelman is cofounder/editor of <i>Raw</i>, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. From 1992 to 2002, he was a staff artist and writer for <i>The New Yorker</i>, which published his powerful black-on-black 9/11 cover a few days after the event. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. <i>Maus</i> received the Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Spiegelman lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly, and their two children.