The book evolved from Spiegelman's experiences during the
September 11 terrorist attacks. Spiegelman has said that the book was a way to reclaim himself from the
post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after the attacks. It also has many references to Spiegelman's
Maus comics, for example one in which Art said that the smoke in Manhattan smelled just like Vladek said the smoke in the concentration camps smelled. The Spiegelman narrator often switches to a depiction of himself in mouse form. It was published by the German newspaper after Spiegelman was unable to secure publication in any major American outlet. In Britain, excerpts were published in
The Independent. The comic was serialised in full in the
London Review of Books from March-September 2003. A segment also appeared in 2004 as part of the
Actus Tragicus comics album
Dead Herring Comics. In 2004, the series of ten strips and a supplement of reprints of turn-of-the-20th-century comic strips such as
The Katzenjammer Kids and
The Yellow Kid were collected and published together as a book by
Viking Books.
In the Shadow of No Towers was selected by
The New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004. ==In popular culture==