ABOUT THIS BOOK

A lavishly illustrated tour of the famed adventurer’s globetrotting travels, written by a celebrated translator of Polo’s writings.

At the age of seventeen, Marco Polo left his Venetian home on a continent-spanning adventure that lasted for nearly a quarter century. Imprisoned in Genoa five years later, he collaborated with Arthurian romance writer Rustichello of Pisa on a work they called The Description of the World. That book recounted “all the greatest marvels and great diversities of Greater Armenia, Persia, the Tartars, India, and many other provinces,” a story that made Polo famous for all time.

In Marco Polo and His World, Sharon Kinoshita brings these marvels to life, describing the myriad commodities, plants, people, and animals that Marco encountered and recorded. Copiously illustrated, this book offers a vibrant introduction to Marco Polo’s astounding adventures.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Sharon Kinoshita is professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her many publications include an annotated translation of Marco Polo’s Description of the World.

REVIEWS

“An excellent general introduction to Marco Polo. . . . Kinoshita provides much-needed elegant and imaginative discussions of historical contexts, in terms of people, places, and activities in different parts of the world in Marco Polo’s time, as a way of bringing Polo and his work to life.”

— Margaret Kim, professor, National Tsing Hua University

"In Marco Polo and His World, Sharon Kinoshita offers us at once a single life – that of Marco Polo, merchant, traveler and narrator – and multiple lives, which radiate out like the spokes of a wheel during the original voyage from Italy to China. From one vantage point the book recounts the life of Marco Polo; from another that of the Great Khan, Qubilai; from another the exemplary history of Alexander the Great; and finally, in the speculative closing chapter, Marco Polo’s singular life is refracted out into the lifetimes of three of his contemporaries – a Chinese painter, a South Asian poet and a Byzantine princess. This is an unusual, adventuresome book that will open up multiple medieval worlds to a wide audience."

— Suzanne Conklin Akbari, co-editor of 'Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1 Marco Polo and His World 2 The Book of the Great Khan 3 The Book of Marvels 4 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral Merchants and their World 5 Portrait Gallery: Marco Polo’s Contemporaries Afterword References Select Bibliography Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements Index