Desmond Elliott Prize won by Ali Shaw
24th June 2010
Ali Shaw has scooped the 2010 Desmond Elliott Prize for his debut novel The Girl with Glass Feet.
The writer, who previously worked as a bookseller and at Oxford's Bodleian Library, saw off competition from Maria Allen with Before the Earthquake and Jacob Polley with Talk of the Town to win the GBP 10,000 prize.
Elizabeth Buchan, chair of the judging panel, commented: 'After some soul searching and much debate, we decided on The Girl with Glass Feet as our winner. This is an extraordinary first novel.'
Buchan, an author and journalist, said the novel is 'bold, original, tragic and endlessly surprising'.
Shaw worked on The Girl with Glass Feet for almost five years and took his inspiration from Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. It was also nominated for the Costa First Novel Award 2009, the Crawford Award and the Guardian First Book Award 2009.
In 2009, the Desmond Elliott Prize was handed to Edward Hogan for Blackmoor, while Nikita Lalwani won the inaugural award in 2008 with Gifted.