Coming Soon: "The Ballroom" by Abraham Boyarsky

The Ballroom is a haunting, dystopian novel set in a crumbling, post-secession Montreal where the economy has collapsed, language laws have fractured society, and survival is a daily gamble—literally. Seventeen-year-old Bella and her war-scarred father, Walter, eke out a precarious existence by participating in a strange game of chance inside a repurposed luxury hotel ballroom. In this surreal competition, players use observation, estimation, and strategy to guess the number of people in the ballroom—hoping to win a jackpot that means shelter, food, or escape.

As the father-daughter duo struggle with homelessness, poverty, and their memories of a family lost to addiction and war, The Ballroom unfolds as a meditation on resilience, dignity, and the quiet bonds of love amid despair. Bella, old for her years, strives to protect her father even as she’s shaped by the harshness of her world and haunted by the promise of a different future. Walter, burdened by trauma and remorse, clings to routines and rituals—his military past, his quiet acts of care for Bella, and his near-obsessive determination to win the game.

Around them, a cast of unforgettable characters populates the Ballroom: cynical veterans, displaced immigrants, aggressive gamblers, floor monitors enforcing brutal rules, and Prefontaine, the enigmatic floor manager who rules the Ballroom with theatrical flair and iron discipline. Their days are measured by cold, hunger, and the dangling hope of a jackpot.

Yet the true core of the novel lies in its exploration of human dignity: an old Sikh professor publicly humiliated for his turban, a newborn baby abandoned in an alley, Bella’s painful memory of her mother’s overdose, and Walter’s violent flashbacks to Afghanistan. Amid the chaos, the father and daughter find grace in small rituals—a shared pizza, a letter to a lost mother, a moment of warmth under flickering lights.

Rich in atmosphere, The Ballroom blends gritty realism with poetic observation, echoing the works of Orwell, Cormac McCarthy, and Kazuo Ishiguro. It offers a stark vision of social collapse—but also a poignant testament to familial love, the persistence of hope, and the human spirit’s ability to endure.