Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

by: Laurence Bergreen

Published by: Vintage

Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali

Marco Polo was captured by the Genoese during the Battle of Curzola in 1298 and was confined in a comfortable prison where he and the other prisoners roamed freely. Here he met Rustichello, a romance author, and together they compiled and embellished Marco’s travel stories. They both profited from this endeavor by entertaining guests to while away the time, and later for monetary rewards. This collection was called “Travels.”

Marco Polo’s Travels, while based on his travels and the stories he heard on his travels, were never meant to be an accurate travelogue – these were stories to entertain the guests. As such, taking the Travels (of which there are several manuscripts often contradicting each other, rearranging the order of events and omitting events) as a factual account of Marco Polo’s adventures is missing the point. It seems that this account is based on one of the more complete manuscripts and the text usually takes the manuscript at face value (often citing how the events could be true), except for a few well-known discrepancies.

The text itself is choppy most probably because it closely mirrors the manuscripts, which lack a coherent structure, ramble on and notoriously jump from one topic to another. The writing is repetitious and focuses on details that do not readily fit into a coherent overarching structure. While a lot of research may have gone into exploring the subject matter, the final product falls short of an engaging narrative or an insightful critique.

As far as the content is concerned, this book may be good at the high school level, but is not suitable at the college level. Unfortunately, the writing style poses additional challenges when approaching the text. A major oversight is the inexplicable absence of a single modern map. One would expect not only relevant maps, but also those showing the routes that Marco Polo claimed to have taken during his journeys. The book’s attempt to add depth to Marco Polo’s character, herald him as a forward-thinking globalist, pilgrim and explorer are less than convincing.

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