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As the utmost celebrated European to explore Asia, Marco Polo was the original global traveler and the earliest bridge between East and West. A universal icon of adventure and discovery, he has inspired six centuries of popular fascination and spurious mythology. Now, from the acclaimed author of Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (“Superb . . . A first-rate historical page turner”—The NY Times)—comes the first fully authoritative biography of one of the most enchanting figures in world history. Within this masterly work, Marco Polo’s incredible odyssey—across the Silk Road and through all the great circumstances of his life—is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail.
We meet him as a callow young man, the scion of an wealthy Venetian merchant family, only seventeen when he sets out in 1271 with his father and uncle on the journey to Asia. We see him gain the confidence of Kublai Khan, the world’s most feared and powerful leader, and watch him become a trusted diplomat and intelligence agent in the ruler’s inner circle. Our company is aware of his far-flung adventures on behalf of the Khan, living among the list of Mongols and other tribes, and traveling to magical cities, some far advanced within the West. We learn the customs of the Khan’s court, both erotic and mercantile, and Polo’s uncanny ability to adjust to them. We follow him on his journey back again to Venice, loaded with riches, the latest inventions, and twenty-four years’ worth of extraordinary tales.
And we see his collaboration with the famed writer Rustichello of Pisa, who immediately saw in Polo the storyplot of a lifetime; enlivened by his genius for observation, Polo’s tales needed little embellishment. Recorded by Rustichello as both languished as prisoners of war in a Genoese jail, the Travels would explode the idea of non-Europeans as untutored savages and stand as the definitive description of China until the nineteenth century.
Drawing on original sources in more than half a dozen languages, and by himself travels along Polo’s route in China and Mongolia, Bergreen explores the lingering controversies surrounding Polo’s legend, settling age-old questions and testing others for significance. Synthesizing history, biography, and travelogue, this is the timely chronicle of a guy who extended the boundaries of human knowledge and imagination. Destined to be the definitive account of its subject for many years to come, Marco Polo takes us on a journey to the limits of history—and beyond.
