The Sky Is Too Vast

Inspired by the author’s family history, this fascinating novel retraces the steps of his uncle, a legendary pilot who vanished in the 1970s, across Iraq, Russia, and France.

“The sky is vast, Mom, far too huge. Will I get lost up there?” This is what Adel wrote to his mother in 1967. An exceptional pilot, the young Iraqi was sent by the Air Force to be trained in the USSR, before mysteriously disappearing in 1974, between Baghdad and Krasnodar.

Thirty years later, his nephew Taymour can no longer bear the secrecy surrounding his uncle, this hero whose absence weighs heavier than legend. Is he dead or gone, victim or fugitive? Relentlessly fighting against the silence of a family and a regime, Taymour will question his relatives, pore over his uncle’s notebooks, and decipher every photo of Adel on his MiG21 jet fighter.

“When it snows in Baghdad” is what they say in Iraq about something that will never happen. And yet, in the tracks left by Adel in the snow upon his arrival in the USSR, there must be a thread to be pulled, one of those threads of love and blood that keep even men who dream of the sky and elsewhere grounded.