Glory: A Novel

"One of the strange things about the Booker Prize is that there are not fixed criteria. The judges have to develop their own criteria, allow them to evolve through conversation. One thing we were particularly struck by was the capacity of an author to create another world, a universal world that we could enter, simply through the use of words. Glory is such a world. The way Bulawayo uses set forms of words, or repetition, a sense of incantation that takes you into a different rhythm of thinking and living, which matches, of course, the otherness of presenting the history of Zimbabwe through fabular animals. Using animals to tell what is, in many ways, a fairly straightforward political history of Zimbabwe over the last 40 years, allows a very high degree of emotional engagement by the reader; we inhabit the space emotionally, as well as historically. And the animals do something very remarkable, I think, because they remove the question of race. The story becomes simply about how living beings treat each other. And that we found very powerful. I imagine different judges will value different things in different years. The five of us, as I said, valued use of language to create a universe, but also a capacity to mix humour into the narrative. One of the striking things about the shortlist is that four of the books are very tragic political narratives of cruelty of and injustice, or war, or killing. And yet, those four books have very sharp moments of real humour. And that too heightens the emotional engagement of the reader."