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theesotericcamel's review
4.0
The legend goes that the book was first conceived in Genoa, where Marco Polo happened to share a prison cell with romance writer Rustichello Da Pisa. Intrigued by Marco Polo's stories about his travels to the Orient, they both saw a potentially lucrative chance to collect these into a book. In his prologue, Rustichello Da Pisa describes Marco Polo as "the most well-travelled man of this age," and this is perhaps not as much of an exaggeration as it sounds. For Indeed, Polo's service for Kubilai Khan, the Emperor of Cathay (North China) at the time, took Polo and his family ever deeper into the East. Perhaps the first travelogue to achieve literary fame, and all this before printed materials were widely available, it dates back to the 13th century. Keeping this in mind, Marco Polo is revealed to be a very tolerant man, and also a very observant one. The particular translation I read endevoured to keep the chattiness of the original prose. So stories are punctuated with "What more is there to say?" and "Why make a long story of it?" along with other casual formulas of speech. Keep in mind that this is a travelogue from a merchant's perspective, so there are a lot of descriptions products special to the area, and the route of travel. But these are frequently augmented with anecdotes and stories from that area too, and it is these that provide the colour to the book. While in Persia for example, Marco Polo tells us of a popular story of an old man with a fortress in a mountain, and his teams of assassins. Some of you probably recognize this story as being about Hassan I Sabbah. I do not think this story's infamy originated with this book, but it is still interesting to learn how captivating the story it was even way back then. Some of these stories and observations sound fantastical, and it becomes evident that Marco Polo is telling this stories second hand from other sources without saying so. But the majority of it seems truthful enough. Marco Polo was a very lucky guy to have seen and done as much as he had in his day and age. And as it goes with any travelogue written from any age, I frequently felt as if I was traveling alongside as part of the retinue. The real world was and still is full of wonderous adventures after all.
gingerliss's review
3.0
This is one of those books that's quite impossible to rate the way I would rate a more modern day work of literature. The book is not particularly written well and is extremely repetitive. At the same time it is intertwined with wonderful little gems. At times it had me laughing out loud because of the viewpoint filled with the Western ideals at the time and the almost childlike innocence of Marco Polo or his scribe. Which is only innocence because now we know so much more than at the time this book was write. To give an example: Marco Polo thought rhinoceroses were unicorns and described them as being much more ugly than he had expected them to be. The repetition actually also made me laugh at times. But really when thinking about this books function, it wasn't meant to be read as a novel or one of Bill Bryson's travel companions. It was meant for other merchants/explorers who would be interested in the subjects so often repeated. The religion of the folk living in whichever town city or province, the popular wears in said areas, and so on and so forth. So I'm sure it passed for its function at the time. As a piece of history I thought it was really interesting. I probably wouldn't read it again, but there are certainly a few excerpts in there I would reread and possibly quote. The whole who the f wrote this book is also very interesting as the narrative changes throughout. Most of the time it's told as if someone else is telling Marco's story, but every now and again it's told from first person perspective. My personal opinion, I'm guessing he wrote it himself, but tried using third person to sound more interesting, but then every now and again slipped up and the ink and parchment was too expensive to redo so he just left it that way. Much like the moments he is about to tell us about something, but then realises, no wait... I forgot to tell you this, I'm going to tell you this first.
Soooo would I recommend?
If you are interested in history... Yes definitely.
If you are interested in literature... Also definitely.
If you dislike repetitiveness... Absolutely not...
If you are interested in the perspectives of an Italian on Medieval Asia... Definitely
If you are interested in literature but not so much the old stuff... Nope
If you want an easy read... Yeah... The language is super duper easy.. I was worried it was going to be really complicated and full of fancy old words, but honestly, most of this could have been written by an intelligent ten year old. (Leaving out anything sexual that is)
From that you should pretty much be able to decide.
I'm going to leave you with my favourite part of the book:
Marco describes a place where for a woman the more sexual partners you've had the more highly you are respected and the most wanted you will be as a wife. Now in this place Marco described that whenever there were outsiders visiting the people of the village would bring all their women and tell the strangers they could have their way with them for the night. These women received some kind of trinket around their neck for every sexual experience they had. Anyway Marco rounds off his description telling us that it is most certainly a wonderful place for a young man of 16-24 to visit (in other words but you get the gist). This I thought quite hilarious.
Soooo would I recommend?
If you are interested in history... Yes definitely.
If you are interested in literature... Also definitely.
If you dislike repetitiveness... Absolutely not...
If you are interested in the perspectives of an Italian on Medieval Asia... Definitely
If you are interested in literature but not so much the old stuff... Nope
If you want an easy read... Yeah... The language is super duper easy.. I was worried it was going to be really complicated and full of fancy old words, but honestly, most of this could have been written by an intelligent ten year old. (Leaving out anything sexual that is)
From that you should pretty much be able to decide.
I'm going to leave you with my favourite part of the book:
Marco describes a place where for a woman the more sexual partners you've had the more highly you are respected and the most wanted you will be as a wife. Now in this place Marco described that whenever there were outsiders visiting the people of the village would bring all their women and tell the strangers they could have their way with them for the night. These women received some kind of trinket around their neck for every sexual experience they had. Anyway Marco rounds off his description telling us that it is most certainly a wonderful place for a young man of 16-24 to visit (in other words but you get the gist). This I thought quite hilarious.
milesdiaboli's review against another edition
3.0
What can I say, Rusticiaus has a formula for structure and reading the same phrases over and over in hundreds of entries does get a bit repetitive/make my eyes glaze over
acoffman7's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely fascinating. Much easier to read than I thought it would be.