The Rift

The Rift is a 2017 science fiction and literary fiction novel by English writer Nina Allan. It was first published in July 2017 in the United Kingdom as a trade paperback by Titan Books. It is the second book of a two-book deal Allan signed with Titan in 2015; the first is the second edition of her debut novel, The Race, published in 2016. The novel is about two sisters, Selena and Julie, who become separated when Julie disappears. Twenty years later she returns, claiming to have been on another planet, and Selena is conflicted over whether to believe Julie's story or not. The Rift was generally well received by critics. It won two awards, the 2018 British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel, and the 2018 Red Tentacle Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the 2018 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The Rift was translated into French by Bernard Sigaud as La Fracture and published by Tristram in 2019. Development The development of The Rift started from a short story Allan had been asked to write for Dead Letters: An Anthology of the Undelivered, the Missing, the Returned..., edited by Conrad Williams. Nina said, "I started writing and couldn't stop ... it wasn't long before I had 30,000 words and no end in sight. It was at this point I realised that what I was writing wasn't a short story at all, but my next novel." Despite having deviated from her original goal of writing a short story, Allan took time off from The Rift and wrote "Astray" for Dead Letters, a story she linked to the novel in order not to lose a "mental connection with the main project".