Pride of Baghdad is even more a product of politics, and Vaughan takes even less of a political stand in it. The four lions represent the disparate Iraqi civilian attitudes about the war: one is an opportunist who doesn’t care who’s in charge as long as he’s doing well, another is a revolutionary who resents outside interference, and so on. “The surprising thing is that some reviews say it’s really heavy-handed in its politics and others say they loved it because it’s completely apolitical. I didn’t want it to be a preachy polemic — I wanted it to be open to interpretation, because I think that people’s interpretations are more important than my intent. I guess I’m most surprised by people who read it as a straight animal story, but that’s how I read Animal Farm the first time I read it, in sixth grade.”
Of course, as he acknowledges, there aren’t many books more polemical than Animal Farm. “But Pride of Baghdad is inspired by a true story: the ending’s not one I’ve created to say something. I wanted to write about non-combatants, and tell a story about civilians in wartime. If I can make people think about factoring civilians into the cost of war, then I don’t care what else they think about it.”
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