Falkirk-born writer about to dispense her first ever novel

Rachelle Atalla grew up in the Falkirk area, attending Braes High School before relocating to Glasgow.

Her first novel The Pharmacist will be published by Hodder and Stoughton on May 12 in hardback, E-book and audio book formats.

Rachelle, who still has family in the Falkirk area who she visits on a regular basis, said: “I won a Scottish Book Trust new writers’ award a few years ago and was lucky enough to land a book deal.”

Critics and fellow authors are calling The Pharmacist “beautifully written”, a “compulsive, claustrophobic but wonderfully compassionate read” and “an unflinching portrayal of what we might all be capable of”.

Set in the future, the novel’s main character Wolfe is one of the inhabitants of “the bunker” – survivors of a major catastrophe who are all biding their time together until they can re-emerge into the outside world again.

A pharmacist, Wolfe gives out medicine under the watchful eye of the bunker’s increasingly erratic and paranoid leader.

Initially safe, Wolfe soon finds her relatively comfortable existence threatened when the leader starts to ask her to do favours.

Forming an unlikely alliance with the young Doctor Stirling and other bunker denizens, Wolfe must navigate the “powder keg of life” underground where one misstep will “light the fuse”.

As the promotional material for the book states: “The walls that keep her safe also have her trapped”.

Of Egyptian descent, Rachelle has been writing short stories and screenplays for a number of years and her tales have been published widely in literary anthologies.

Her first short film screenplay, Trifle, was commissioned by the Scottish Film and Talent Network and is currently enjoying a successful festival run, having been officially selected for the LA International Short Film Festival.

The screenwriter has a four-part mini-drama in development with Hopscotch Films, and she has been selected to participate in the 2021 Young Films Foundation Skye residency programme, developing her first feature length screenplay with BBC Films.

As if all that was not enough, Rachelle’s second novel, Livestock, is scheduled to be published in 2023.