Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22762 in Books
• Published on: 1990-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Synopsis
One of the most successful, influential and acclaimed travel books of recent years. At the age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple left his college in Cambridge to travel to the ruins of Kublai Khan's stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. This is an account of a quest which took him and his companions across the width of Asia, along dusty, forgotten roads, through villages and cities full of unexpected hospitality and wildly improbable escapades, to Coleridge's Xanadu itself. At once funny and knowledgeable, In Xanadu is in the finest tradition of British travel writing. Told with an exhilarating blend of eloquence, wit, poetry and delight, it is already established as a classic of its kind.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, but could have been better
In the mid 1980s, William Dalrymple (then in his early 20s) made a journey retracing the steps of Marco Polo's famous journey during the 1200s, from the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to the site of Shangdu (or Xanadu, as is better known in literature), the summer palace of Kublai Khan, in Outer Mongolia, China. In reality, though, since Soviet Central Asia was then barred to western travel, he deviated in part from Marco Polo's route, going through the Baluchi desert, in southern Iran and Pakistan, and then up the Indus river, and through the then newly opened Karakoram highway to western China, instead of traveling to China through Samarkand and other cities in Central Asia. The book itself is a mixed bag, there is some interesting things in it (at least he did some homework in terms of research) but there are far too many of the sort of banal, smug and self-centered comments and experiences you see in much of the travel writing of westerners as they go through the third world.

Informative and fun
In this book William Dalrymple sets out to follow in the steps of Marco Polo to the Palace of Kubla Khan with a vial of "holy oil" from Jerusalem. On the way he travels through some seemingly very inhospitable places, where the people turn out to be extremely hospitable. He is a writer to be reckoned with as he brings the people and places to life. I enjoyed this book but gave it 4 stars as I thought some of the scenes were a little bit too long, but overall I found it to be informative and fun, and certainly different from the diet of "I moved to another country for the sun" books which seem to have dominated this genre in recent years.

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple
I was encouraged to read this book by a friend - Travel is not really my bag BUT I LOVED IT!!! Once started I couldn't put it down. The dry humour greatly amused me. I loved the mix of interesting historical asides to a modern travelogue. I was intrigued by the descriptions of the people William Dalrymple met on his travels. Whether this is your first travel book or simply the most recent I don't see how you can fail to enjoy it.