Shattering of a brittle material such as glass occurs dynamically through a propagating failure wave, which however, can not be assigned to any of the classical wave. In this paper, we build a thermodynamically consistent theory based on the idea that a failure wave is analogous to a deflagration wave. Our theory admits, as special cases, the classical models of Feng and Clifton. Two fundamental thermodynamic functions form the basis of our theory. This approach allows for the construction of a new variational principle and a Lagrangian formulation. Finally, the theory is linearized to interpret specific experimental observations.