When a first novel comes out in nine different countries, including the United States, as soon as it is published, it has to be pretty special. Ali Shaw’s The Girl With Glass Feet is not just special — it’s remarkable. And now he is in line for a £10,000 prize as one of ten writers shortlisted for the Guardian newspaper’s first book award.

Set in a snowbound archipelago, where myth and magic seem to be woven into the forests, beaches, waterfalls, marshlands and cliffs that define this wintery place, Ali’s debut novel conjures up the extraordinary and fantastic, yet places it firmly in our digital world. From time to time, readers might assume they are reading an ancient fairy tale, but the mention of a digital camera or television immediately takes them back to the 21st century.

As the title suggests, it’s about a young woman, Ida Maclaird, who is slowly turning into glass from the feet up. She’s confident that the elusive Henry Fuwa, who lives on the archipelago, can explain what is happening to her, as he knows about extraordinary things. Unfortunately he is difficult to pin down, living in secrecy, with a herd of winged cattle the size of mice.

It’s the photographer Midas Crook, another loner, who helps Ida come to terms with her affliction. But as the glass slowly creeps up Ida’s body, he finds that despite his burgeoning love, time is slipping away.

It’s a very visual novel — readers who enjoy using their imagination will adore it. Ali makes no apology for the weird and wonderful images he conjures up.

“Images just come into my head; they always have. They become imprinted there and I have to decide what to do with them.”

Ida’s image — the glass feet — came to him when he was travelling down an escalator at Reading railway station. “I didn’t jot it down as some writers do — I firmly believe that if an image is that powerful it will either remain in my mind or return when it is ready.”

He has written short stories all his life, encapsulating the images dancing in his head. Many of his ideas arrived while he was shifting books when he worked at Blackwell’s and at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Writing this novel was the first time he has woven his images into a more complex form. “I wanted the book to be a conversation of images,” he explained.

The winged cattle came late, while Henry was already making his way into the story. Ali did not place him alongside these magical creatures initially. “Then I thought, why not? These fragile magical creatures, whose very magicalness is the source of their difficulties, represent the idea of beauty and its fragility. They are part of the magical experience — even falling in love.”

Why add digital cameras and TVs to a novel which could have easily been set in any period? “I felt it was important that the magical elements stayed within their bounds, that the characters lived within a world that the reader could understand.”

It was particularly important that Midas, the young photographer, was using digital equipment. “Midas has problems with other people; he finds it difficult to be close to them. He found it particularly difficult to touch another. The digital camera created a hole in his life. He was no longer able to lock himself away in the dark room, touching the only things that gave him pleasure — the negatives and the prints that emerged from them.”

Midas also came into his mind while he was travelling down an escalator. “He proved a difficult character to work with because of his neurosis, but I needed another character to describe Ida’s condition and push the story along,” he said, “I had created a character who didn’t want to come out of his shell. I had to ask myself if he really did exist what would he do? Then allow him the freedom to do it.”

Ali is now working on a novel that he says is “set against a backdrop of sunlight”, but rooted just as firmly in folk law and magic as the Girl With Glass Feet.

* The Girl With Glass Feet is published by Atlantic Books at £12.99. The Guardian award will be announced in December.