The Travels (Penguin Classics Hardcover) - Softcover

Polo, Marco

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241253055 ISBN 13: 9780241253052

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2016

Synopsis

A sparkling new translation of the most famous travel book ever written

Marco Polo’s voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China. Afterward, he served 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 religions; new 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 color and immediacy, Marco Polo’s book revolutionized Western ideas about the then-unknown East and remains one of the greatest travel accounts of all time. Nigel Cliff’s new translation, based on the original medieval sources, is a fresh, authoritative rendering, with a lively introduction and notes.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

About the Author:

Marco Polo travelled to China in 1271 and spent the next twenty years in the service of Kublai Khan. He wrote his famous Travels after returning home, whilst a prisoner in Genoa.

Nigel Cliff was previously a theatre and film critic for The Times and a regular writer for The Economist, among other publications, and now writes historical nonfiction books. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots, was published in 2007 and 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 and was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.

Review:

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0241253055
• ISBN 13: 9780241253052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Cliff Nigel