Marco Polo’s account of his journey throughout the East in the thirteenth century was one of the earliest European travel narratives, and it remains the most important. The merchant-traveler from Venice, the first to cross the entire continent of Asia, provided us with accurate descriptions of life in China, Tibet, India, and a hundred other lands, and recorded customs, natural history, strange sights, historical legends, and much more. From the dazzling courts of Kublai Khan to the perilous deserts of Persia, no book contains a richer magazine of marvels than the Travels.

This edition, selected and edited by the great scholar Manuel Komroff, also features the classic and stylistically brilliant Marsden translation, revised and corrected, as well as Komroff’s Introduction to the 1926 edition.

Marco Polo the Venetian traveled throughout the Far East in the 13th-Century, discovering all manner of advanced wonders of art and technology unknown to Europeans, and serving as Kubla Khan's trusted advisor and ambassador. When he returned to Venice after a 25 year absence, no one believed his tales. Dictated in prison, his Travels is one of the earliest European travel tales and remains a "thrilling story of what even in our day is still the land of wonder."