Six individuals. Three couples. One dead body.

Uyuni, Bolivia. Home to the largest salt flats in the world, stretching more than 4,050 square miles.

Six strangers make the pilgrimage to a remote retreat, famous for its traditional medicines and healing rituals. Over the course of five days, they're promised a journey of self-discovery and exploration.

Cut off from of their day-to-day lives, the group become fast friends in their shared quest to better themselves. But when a dead body is found the morning after a ceremony, everything they thought they knew about themselves - and each other - is turned on its head.

Stranded with limited resources, time is quickly running out. As tensions rise and suspicions deepen, how far will each member of the group go to ensure their survival?

About the Author
Rachelle Atalla is a Scottish-Egyptian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter based in Glasgow. Her short stories have been published widely in literary anthologies and she is the recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Her first short film screenplay Trifle was commissioned by the Scottish Film & Talent Network and she is developing her first feature length screenplay with BBC Film. The Pharmacist was her first novel and shortlisted for the Scottish Fiction Book of the Year; Thirsty Animals is her second.

Reviews
Gripping, original and bold, this is an ambitious and hugely imaginative novel in which a growing sense of unease reaches an almost unbearable intensity. * Lucie McKnight Hardy *
The Salt Flats is gripping, compulsive and deeply deeply human. Rachelle Atalla is one of the few writers whose novels I cannot put down. * Heather Parry *
Immersive, confrontational, intelligent and tender. * Kirsty Logan *
The Salt Flats is a superb and spellbinding evocation of an otherworldly place, doused in a creeping sense of horror, with a cast of characters who are willing to do almost anything to escape from reality. * Carole Hailey *
Utterly compelling, desolate yet uplifting, and always with one eye on the triumph of the human spirit. A truly terrific novel. * Dr Liam Bell *
Compulsive and compelling, Rachelle Atalla's The Salt Flats is a tour-de-force, a blistering excavation of the lengths to which people will go to both confront and run from the past. A story that will linger with you, and prompts as many questions as it provides answers. * Cailean Steed *
The Salt Flats is trippy nightmare of a book, a smart, tense thriller written with huge amounts of heart. * Doug Johnstone *
In The Salt Flats, Atalla consolidates her status as queen of the claustrophobic character study, finding in the seemingly perfect retreat a pressure cooker to strip her characters right to their respective cores, without ever losing sight of her compassion. A compulsive and thrilling read, Atalla is a major talent to watch. * Charlie Roy *
This is a novel for our times, but also for all time, as the complex and fragile humanity at its heart will endure * SNACK Magazine *



Book Information
ISBN 9781399727310
Author Rachelle Atalla
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Hodder Paperback
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton