![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It was written in Old French by Rustichello de Pisa, an Italian romance (heroic/chivalric literature) writer on the basis of Marco Polo’s autobiographical narratives while the two were imprisoned together in Genoa (the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa had been at war from 1256 to 1381). The Book of the Marvels of the World aka Description of the World aka simply The Travels of Marco Polo(1300) is that extraordinary travelogue that has ceaselessly enthralled readers for more than seven centuries. 1300) translated by William Marsden (1908/2008, Everyman’s Library) Marco Polo in Tartar costume, Wikipedia The Travels of Marco Polo (c. ![]() These two reading experiences – distinct in form but thematically similar – have sparked in me a great interest in travelogues, both historical and contemporary. This one focusses on that grand ancient network of routes that facilitated the exchange of goods and ideas between the East and the West. Last year, I read a beautiful little book called Invisible Cities(1972) by Italian author Italo Calvino (1923-1985) – a fictionalised, highly inventive, account of the meeting between the Venetian merchant traveller Marco Polo (1254–1324) and the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan (1215-1294). Then, recently I finished The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (2015) by Oxford scholar Peter Frankopan – a well-researched and very entertaining reframing of world history with central Asia as the nucleus. ![]()
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