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…. “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. Stumbling upon these thermal columns throughout the collection is simply joyous and elevates the entire work.” Raffel climbs to her creative heights when her characters feel their most complete, as if we were peering down into entire histories from 50,000 feet. Boundless as the Sky often reaches rarified air. Her work finds new ground in the surprise of discovery, the wonder of achievement, and the horror of people lost within labyrinths of their own construction…. Raffel sets out to explore not just imagined landscapes, but the unseen denizens who live within them. “Dawn Raffel’s newest work of compact prose and deep imagination, titled Boundless as the Sky, is a sincerely humane response to one of postmodernism’s most abstract masterpieces…. 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.” “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…. Myths, shards of history, and visits to such wryly mysterious places as the Piquantly dystopian fables with a tincture of dark humor about mothers andĭaughters, aging, fire, water, and ecocide collaged with startling variations on Riddling vignettes are spiked with word play and provocative allusions, “iscerningly refined, sharply faceted tales…. Profile of a city within a city creates a Russian nesting doll of urban History of Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair for this sublime collection…. “Raffel … draws inspiration from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the Read an excerpt from the book at Bookanista. Listen to podcast interviews with Dawn Raffel about the book on Beyond the Zero and on Gil Roth’s Virtual Memories. Moment with startling insight and urgency. Poetic diptych call out to each other with a mysterious and disquieting harmony,Īnd from history and fantasy to the dangers and dark realities of the current The novella follows a few of the many thousands ofĬhicagoans there to witness the planes’ arrival. When aviation made banner headlines across the US, and news of the Nazis was To Chicago was lauded by both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Hitler, at a time To Chicago’s “Century of Progress” World’s Fair. Seaplanes flown in a display of fascist power by Mussolini’s wingman Italo Balbo It is based closely on a trueĮvent, the arrival of a “roaring armada of goodwill” in the form of twenty-four Single city-Chicago-on a single day in 1933. The second part comes together into one narrative, taking place in a The first of its two parts, stories of real and invented cities, someĪncient, some dystopian, is a response to Italo Calvino’s InvisibleĬities. Repose beneath the cities we inhabit, and the worlds we try to build out of Buy this Book at Amazon Asterism Books Barnes & Noble Blackwells (UK) Foyles (UK)ĭawn Raffel’s Boundless as the Sky is a book of the invisible histories that
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