Nina Allan was born in East London. She studied German and Russian at Exeter University and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where she completed an MLitt and monograph on madness, death and disease in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov. With her short fiction appearing in many magazines and anthologies, Allan's story collection THE SILVER WIND, a meditation on time, memory and the nature of reality was awarded the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire (France) in 2014. Her debut novel THE RACE, set in an alternate Britain and dealing with themes of identity and loss, was shortlisted for the Kitschies Red Tentacle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2015. She also won The Novella Award for THE HARLEQUIN. THE RIFT, a tale of two sisters separated as teenagers and reunited in mysterious circumstances twenty years later, was published in July 2017 by Titan Books and won the British Science Fiction Award and The Kitschies Red Tentacle. Her novel THE DOLLMAKER was published by riverrun in 2019, and CONQUEST in 2023. In 2025, Allan's novel THE GOOD NEIGHBOURS was awarded the Prix Médicis étranger.
Allan's latest novel A GRANITE SILENCE was published by riverrun in 2025 and a non-fiction book on J. G. Ballard co-authored with Christopher Priest, THE ILLUMINATED MAN, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2026.
