The Ballroom Paperback by Anna Hope

Product Details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (2016-09-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 352 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780771039119
• Item Weight: 358.34 grams
• Dimensions: 8.21 x 5.63 x 0.92 cm

From the internationally acclaimed author of Wake comes a haunting story of love, insanity, and revolution set at the brink of the Great War.


Yorkshire, England, 1911: After a moment of defiance at the factory where she has worked since she was a child, Ella Fay finds herself an unwilling patient at the Sharston Asylum. Ella knows she is not mad, but she might have to learn to play the game before she can make a true bid for freedom. John Mulligan is a chronic patient, frozen with grief since the death of his child, but when Ella runs towards him one morning in an attempt to escape the place where he has found refuge, everything changes. It is in the ornate ballroom at the centre of the asylum, where the male and female patients are allowed to gather every Friday evening to dance, that Ella and John begin a tentative, secret correspondence that will have shattering consequences, as love and the possibility of redemption are set against one ambitious doctor's eagerness to make his mark in the burgeoning field of eugenics, at all costs.
     Set over the heatwave summer of 1911, at a time when England was at the point of revolt, The Ballroom is a tale of unlikely love and dangerous obsession, of madness and sanity, and of who gets to decide which is which.

About the Author

ANNA HOPE studied English at Oxford, attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and then received an M.A. in creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London. She lives in London. Her first novel, Wake, was a finalist for the National Book Awards and the Historical Writers' Association's Debut Crown Award. Hope's second novel, The Ballroom, is inspired by the true story of her great-great-grandfather who emigrated from Ireland. Follow her on Twitter @Anna_Hope. The author lives in London, UK.