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A review by elentarri
Marco Polo by Laurence Bergreen
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Marco Polo was only seventeen when he accompanies his father and uncle on their second journey to Asia in 1271. Bergreen follows Marco Polo on his journey from Venice, through the Middle East (Persia and what is now Afghanistan), over the Pamirs, to the Central Asian Steppes, where he is introduced to Kublai Khan, and then along the Silk Roads to China, other regions in South East Asia/Indian subcontinent as an emissary, intelligence operative, and tax collector of the Khan. Eventually, and in a round-about fashion, the Polo trio were permitted to go home to Venice, where they had difficulty in convincing the remaining family members that they were the long absent merchants who had departed almost 25 years earlier (foreign garb and rusty Italian will do that, apparently). Here, Marco Polo gets involved in the war with Genoa, ends up languishing in prison with a fellow inmate (Rustichello of Pisa), who just so happened to be an Italian romance writer. Prison being pretty boring, Rustichello and Polo opted to collaborate in transferring Polo's travel tales and reminiscences onto parchment (with some embellishments from Rustichello, and in butchered French of all languages!).
No original version of the 'Travels of Marco Polo' exist, but there are over a hundred incomplete, differing versions (Marco Polo continued telling his stories and these were included in subsequent copies), with additional embellishments from the copyists. However, Marco Polo still managed to preserve a snap shot of the zenith of the Mongolian Empire of Kublai Khan; its fierce leaders, military campaigns, court shenanigans, great cities, alluring women, and exotic customs. After Kublai Khan's death the Empire fragmented and travel through the former Empire became more hazardous.
Bergreen doesn't just tell Marco Polo's travel stories, he also examines various original sources, provides context and background for the travel accounts and makes his own journey across Asia, to determine which parts of 'The Travels' is composed of eye-witness or word-of-mouth stories, and which are fabrications. This is a combination of biography, history and travelogue that tends to plod a bit at times (there are only so many descriptions of Great Cities that I can tolerate), but Bergreen has still provided an accessible and chronological narrative of Marco Polo's fascinating journey to the then little known regions of Asia.
P.S.: More maps would have been useful.
No original version of the 'Travels of Marco Polo' exist, but there are over a hundred incomplete, differing versions (Marco Polo continued telling his stories and these were included in subsequent copies), with additional embellishments from the copyists. However, Marco Polo still managed to preserve a snap shot of the zenith of the Mongolian Empire of Kublai Khan; its fierce leaders, military campaigns, court shenanigans, great cities, alluring women, and exotic customs. After Kublai Khan's death the Empire fragmented and travel through the former Empire became more hazardous.
Bergreen doesn't just tell Marco Polo's travel stories, he also examines various original sources, provides context and background for the travel accounts and makes his own journey across Asia, to determine which parts of 'The Travels' is composed of eye-witness or word-of-mouth stories, and which are fabrications. This is a combination of biography, history and travelogue that tends to plod a bit at times (there are only so many descriptions of Great Cities that I can tolerate), but Bergreen has still provided an accessible and chronological narrative of Marco Polo's fascinating journey to the then little known regions of Asia.
P.S.: More maps would have been useful.