Boundless as the Sky

Boundless as the Sky is a book of the invisible histories that repose beneath the cities we inhabit, and the worlds we try to build out of words. The first of its two parts, stories of real and invented cities, some ancient, some dystopian, is a response to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. The second part comes together into one narrative, taking place in a single city-Chicago-on a single day in 1933. It is based closely on a true event, the arrival of a "roaring armada of goodwill" in the form of twenty-four seaplanes flown in a display of fascist power by Mussolini's wingman Italo Balbo to Chicago's "Century of Progress" World's Fair. The 7000-mile flight from Rome to Chicago was lauded by both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Hitler, at a time when aviation made banner headlines across the US, and news of the Nazis was often in a side column. The novella follows a few of the many thousands of Chicagoans there to witness the planes' arrival. These two panels of Raffel's poetic diptych call out to each other with a mysterious and disquieting harmony, and from history and fantasy to the dangers and dark realities of the current moment with startling insight and urgency.  

Publisher's Weekly: (starred review): "Raffel ... draws inspiration from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the history of Chicago’s 1933 World's Fair for this sublime collection ...  This profile of a city within a city creates a Russian nesting doll of urban tableaux ... This is one to savor."

The Chicago Tribune: “Marvelous and arresting.” —Rick Kogan

Booklist: "Discerningly refined, sharply faceted tales…Raffel creates a carousel of yearning, scheming, and tender characters…achieving strobe-like vibrancy." —Donna Seaman

Lit Hub: “Dawn Raffel is a master at making art from language, coming up with ingenious architecture for her stories, creating portals to mystery and surprise.”—Jane Ciabattari

Wall Street Journal: “The glorious mythology of early aeronautics intersects with the realities of fascism.” —Sam Sacks

The National Book Review: “A powerful American tableau.”

New Letters: “These pages revel in equal parts poignancy, philosophy, and stark reality. What makes it so successful is how each story finds beauty in the fleeting moment.” —Jesi Bender

The Scotland Herald: “As much a poetic as a literary experience, Dawn Raffel’s sixth book is partially a homage to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities on the 50th anniversary of its publication…. [On] a second reading (it’s a short book) the impressionistic glimpses of its characters swim into sharper focus, and we can see how the beguiling otherworldliness of the ‘City’ section subtly persists throughout the second half, bringing out a rare poise and lyricism.” —Alastair Mabbott

Necessary Fiction: “In Dawn Raffel’s richly imagined Boundless as the Sky, democracy is far from her characters’ minds as they eagerly anticipate the arrival of the ‘Roaring Armada of Goodwill’ at the 1933 World’s Fair. Helmed by Italo Balbo, one of Mussolini’s right-hand men, the Armada arrived in Chicago at the culmination of an historic seven-thousand mile journey…. Tensions in our understanding of and reckoning with the past are at the core of Raffel’s book. She challenges readers to consider how we understand the past, particularly when it persists in the present…. Raffel is an incisive writer. Through the accumulation of words, images, and ideas, a layered and complex narrative tapestry rises from the page.” —Lacey Dunham

Hypertext: “Trembling on the knife’s edge of fascism and war, plumbed in the miseries of the Great Depression, Chicagoans looked to the Century of Progress Fair as the harbinger of miracles to come…fascinating experimental novella.”—Jael Montellano

Chicago Review of Books: “For Raffel, Chicago in 1933 was incubating ‘the past and the seeds of what the future will hold.’ Like dozens of pebbles skipping across the same pond, her characters…create ripples, altering each others’ trajectories. From our perspective, those trajectories trickle down the decades. The characters meet. They narrowly miss each other. They disappoint and confuse each other. They walk from one exhibit to the next, brushing shoulders and overhearing conversations. They look up when General Balbo’s 24 planes roar across the Chicago sky. Soon, they will leave for home, wherever that may be. They will live another day. And still, like the fire-eater considering her own death-defying act, they share the intimacy of urban strangers, brought together in Chicago on July 15, 1933.” — Elizabeth McNeill

Blurbs: 

"In Dawn Raffel's wonderful new book, fascists fly through history, our bodies are not allowed to be our selves, and freaks are everywhere. Cities are thought experiments, jewel cases, and an afternoon's carnival. A beautiful collection where the impish comedy of dark fables meets the urbane planning of Calvino and the exquisite miniatures and deft turns of language that are all her own." -Eugene Lim, author of Search History

“Dawn Raffel is clearly at the height of her powers. Inventive, strange, full of brilliance and light, rage and love, these mysterious histories have everything to do with where we are today.”—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8

“Boundless as the Sky is so exceptional in imagination, form and language that I kept stopping in amazement at each marvel of observation and expression. Raffel is a wonder and we are lucky to have this new book of her fiction—dare I say her best yet!” —Victoria Redel, author of Before Everything

Cover design by Anne Marie Hantho