Book description
As Marco Polo (1254-1324) returned home across the Indian Ocean, after
years in the service of Genghis Khan, he picked up a fabulous array of
stories from sailors and merchants, about the peoples of the region,
some reliable, some wholly implausible, but all fascinating. Great
Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back
through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening,
ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading
experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw
astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and
implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and
flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh,
to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each
other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so
much was still to be discovered. Marco Polo (1254-1324), a Venetian
merchant, spent many years in the service of Kubilai Khan and in his
journeys to and from the Khan's court and around the Mongol Empire
picked up immense amounts of direct and indirect knowledge about Asia.
After his return to Europe he became involved in fighting between Venice
and Genoa, was made a prisoner-of-war and in prison met Rustichello da
Pisa, who wrote down the story of Polo's adventures.
