The Travels

Description

A sparkling new translation of the most famous travel book ever written Marco Polo's voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions in the far east. His subsequent account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad- unfamiliar customs and societies; the spices and silks of the east; the precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts of faraway lands. Evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy, Marco's book revolutionized western ideas about the unknown east and is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time.

Marco Polo (Author) Marco Polo was born in 1254, joining his father on a journey to China in 1271. He spent the next twenty years travelling in the service of Kublai Khan. There is evidence that Marco travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire and it is fairly certain he visited India. He wrote his famous Travels whilst a prisoner in Genoa. Nigel Cliff (Translator) Nigel Cliff's first book, The Shakespeare Riots (2007), was shortlisted for the Washington-based National Award for Arts Writing. His second book, The Last Crusade- Vasco da Gama and the Birth of the Modern World appeared in 2011.

The translation is excellent. The English is clear and modern, but preserves the flavour of the original ... It will doubtless become a standard work and will deservedly take its place as one of the best English translations of Marco Polo's account of his travels -- Stephen G. Haw