The collected
Maus, by Art Spiegelman.
Not sure how many graphic novels/ comics it originally comprised, but I had it all in one book.
I'm not sure I can do it justice. It's Pulitzer prize winning. They had to shoe-horn in into a category because there wasn't one for "black and white artistry, simply drawn in a comic book format but which will make you cry til your skin gets chapped."
Art's Dad was a Polish Jew.
You pretty much know how that went.
He lived and was fucked up. But he was such a bloody survivor.
The ghettos, Auschwitz, TB, starvation, you name it he did it.
And the book is narrated in his voice, in his slightly broken English. Which allows the Jewish voice to come through.
The illustration is very simple, but as you read it becomes very powerful. What looks like a fun cartoon at the start becomes your world as you read it. The Jews are depicted as mice (obv because they were viewed as rodents) the Poles as pigs, the Nazis as cats. There are even sections where the mice wear pig-masks in order to "pass".
And you never, ever forget that this is a real account. Told by a real man with a number tattooed on his arm, to his son who happened to be a graphic artist. And he wasn't a lovely cuddly man either; he was a real man with real problems.
The most exceptional book I've read in years.