PENGUIN CLASSICS : PENGUIN CLASSICS THE TRAVELS – MARCO POLO-NIGEL CLIFF-NIGEL CLIFF-NIGEL CLIFF

A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written: Marco Polo s seminal account of his journeys in the east. Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad: unfamiliar religions, 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 then unknown East and is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time. For this edition – the first completely new English translation of the Travels in over fifty years – Nigel Cliff has gone back to the original manuscript sources to produce a fresh, authoritative new version. The volume also contains invaluable editorial materials, including an introduction describing the world as it stood on the eve of Polo s departure, and examining the fantastical notions the West had developed of the East.