The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Oct 26, 2024 12:24 PM

Author:John Mandeville,Charles Moseley

Ostensibly written by an English knight, the Travels purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan's army, and to have travelled in 'the lands beyond' - countries populated by dog-headed men, cannibals, Amazons and Pygmies. Although Marco Polo's slightly earlier narrative ultimately proved more factually accurate, Mandeville's was widely known, used by Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Frobisher, and inspiring writers as diverse as Swift, Defoe and Coleridge. This intriguing blend of fact, exaggeration and absurdity offers both fascinating insight into and subtle criticism of fourteenth-century conceptions of the world.

Reviews

Wonderfully compelling... Deeply moving

—— Sunday Times

A wonderous tale, beautifully told...mesmerising, poignant and almost incredible

—— New York Times

Meticulous and fascinating... Inspiring reading

—— Spectator

Extraordinary on many counts... It has taken the tireless detective work of Tom Reiss to uncover the real Lev Nussimbaum

—— Sunday Times

A highly entertaining biography of a very unusual person

—— Literary Review

An extraordinary tale of reinvention

—— Guardian

Funny, exactly observed and humane

—— Daily Telegraph

A highly enjoyable mingling of scholarship and sleuthing that elegantly solves the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers

—— Paul Theroux

A remarkable story of East meeting West, and the fantastic historical figure who stood astride both worlds, during an almost equally fantastic moment in time. This is history and biography that reads like a great novel

—— Kevin Baker, author of Paradise Alley

He has a sharp eye for incongruities, and peppers the book with entertaining footnotes

—— Sunday Telegraph

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