Author Tim Severin, along with two buddies, travelled the route of Marco Polo. Tracking Marco Polo (910.92 SEV) is the result of their journey. The book is part travelogue and part history lesson.
Beginning in London, they made their way through Europe and the Middle East on motorcycles. The book is very helpful with understanding each leg of their journey by including maps showing both routes: Marco Polo's and Tim Severin's .
To give you a feel for the book, let's take a look at Severin's experiences in Venice. In that chapter, he weaves Polo's family history in the town. During Polo's visit, he was caught in a battle between two cities: Venice and Genoa. Polo was captured and thrown into prison where he met a fellow prisoner who was a professional storyteller. This storyteller persuaded Polo to write down his travels and publish a book, which they did (and proved to be very popular). Because readers did not believe that the stories were true, it was promoted as a work of fiction.
However, Tim Severin proves to modern-day readers that the stories Polo wrote about were indeed true. In some locations, it took Severin time to find certain sites, but, with a little detective work, he does find many of them.
Here's a sample of his eloquent writing about one of the sites, Goreme, which is locate in what is now Turkey:
"Supposedly there are 365 churches hollowed out of the sandstone columns of Goreme, for each rock cone thrusts upward like a rotten tooth riddled with cavities. We crawled from cavern to cavern, up worn steps and into innumerable passageways and grottoes, till at last we were brought out on a little platform at the very pinnacle of one mound, and could look across at the other pillars with their sockets of cave mouths."
Because this book is copyrighted in 1964, readers will get a taste of life in the Middle East before 9/11.
c Waterloo Public Library 2008
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