Marco Polo

"A brief life and nifty analysis by a young Sinophile"
- The Guardian

"A lucid, lively account"
- The Independent on Sunday

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Marco Polo is famed as one of the first Westerners to report on the Far East. He a knight in the court of Khubilai Khan, an emissary for the Chinese empire, and the first European to write of Japan. But Polo is also a controversial subject - a figure of fun for Italian playwrights, a notorious raconteur, a merchant whose dangerous deals landed him in prison, where the bulk of his famous book was written.

This new biography by Jonathan Clements deals with some of the many controversies that hound Polo's reputation. Why doesn't his name appear in Chinese records? Did he even go to China at all? How are his claims supported by Mongol and Persian sources? In particular Clements examines Polo's shadowy and often forgotten cellmate and collaborator, the poet and fantasist Rustichello, who plundered his own fictional works to add spice to Polo's travelogues.

The book also deals with Polo's fluctuating fame after his death - his influence, real and imagined, on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the tall tales that others told about him.