In Xanadu

By William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple’s award-winning first book: his classic, fiercely intelligent and wonderfully entertaining account of his journey across Marco Polo’s 700-year-old route from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the summer palace of Kubla Khan. 
 
At the age of twenty-two, Dalrymple left his college in Cambridge to travel to the ruins of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. As he and his companions travel across the width of Asia—crossing through Acre, Aleppo, Tabriz, Tashkurgan, and other mysterious and sometimes hellish places—they encounter dusty, forgotten roads, unexpected hospitality, and difficult challenges. Stylish, witty, and knowledgeable about everything from the dreaded order of Assassins to the hidden origins of the Three Magi, this is travel writing at its best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307948915

William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and in 2002 was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to travel literature’. He wrote and presented the TV series ‘Stones of the Raj’ and ‘Indian Journeys’, which won BAFTA’s 2002 Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series. He and his wife, artist Olivia Fraser, have three children, and divide their time between London and Delhi.

Reviews for In Xanadu

[markm2315 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining account of 1.5 pairs of sarcastic British college students retracing Marco Polo's route from Jerusalem to the ruins of Xanadu. It is definitely a story of the type, intrepid white people explore the primitive ways of the rest of mankind, and they do fairly frequently seem to be idiots themselves, but I enjoyed all of it.

[untraveller · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nice, nice read. A whole lotta things I'm not terribly conversant in regarding the Middle East and Near East, but still an excellent read. The recapitulation of the journey through Turkey was interesting and through China as well. I've got a copy of Marco Polo's Journeys sio that will hopefully get read this winter....

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Right off the bat I have to say I love an author who uses the word "churlish." I could tell In Xanadu was going to be a crazy ride when he apologizes in his dedication (who does that?). William Dalrymple takes us on a journey from Lebanon to Inner Mongolia, following the historic path of Marco Polo (Travels). Dalrymple's ultimate goal is to reach the famed palace of Xanadu, of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" fame. For the first half of his expedition he is accompanied by savvy traveler, Laura. The extraordinary thing is he met her at a dinner party just a few weeks before his departure. She just invited herself along because that's the type of person she is. From the way Dalrymple describes her, he sounds a little afraid of her. The second half of his journey is with newly ex-girlfriend, Laura. While not as fierce as Laura, Louisa has endearing qualities all her own. I don't think I will spoil it for anyone when I say they do make it to Xanadu, despite many mishaps along the way.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was Dalrymple’s first book, describing his journey “in the footsteps of Marco Polo” from Jerusalem to the site of Kublai Khan’s summer capital in Inner Mongolia, made during the Long Vacation of 1986, whilst Dalrymple was still an undergraduate in Cambridge. The journey was prompted largely by hearing of the opening of the Karakoram Highway and realising that it might now be possible for foreigners to travel overland from Pakistan to Sinkiang. And I think that's the clue to a slight weakness in the book: unlike his strong interaction with John Moschos in From the Holy Mountain, Dalrymple doesn't display any particular affection for the alleged source text. If anything, he makes it clear that he's rather bored with Polo, whose book he characterises as a 13th century business travel handbook to Central Asia. What the book is really about is the process of travel, as experienced in a succession of accidents by a slightly naive young man bumbling across Asia (accompanied by a comically forceful young woman as far as Lahore, and a different, comically feeble one thereafter). This is always interesting and entertaining - Dalrymple is definitely a good writer, even in his early twenties, and the journey itself is a bold and enterprising one - but there's probably a bit too much of the Robert Byrons about it. Albeit without Byron’s aggressive nastiness - when Dalrymple makes fun of the locals, he always makes sure that he makes himself look even more foolish than they.

[nandadevi_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Malti in his review says it very well. It is interesting to note that in 1961 Tim Severin (‘Tracking Marco Polo’) trod the same path followed by Dalrymple in 1987. Both were in their early twenties, and in both cases their writing and journeying shows tremendous energy, but also a certain thoughtlessness characteristic of somewhat privileged youth (think Oxford and Cambridge Universities). To their credit it is the honesty of their accounts that shows them in such a bad light. Both became much better writers and journeyers later in life. Dalrymple got a little further along the trail of Marco Polo than Severin, and wrote a more substantial book out of it. However, this is certainly a ‘lesser’ work of Dalrymple’s and best sampled after reading some of his later works (and Severin’s ‘Tracking Marco Polo’), all of which may put you more in mind to overlook its (and his) youthful failings.

[milti_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A Dalrymple book does not disappoint. Especially not his first publication, at the age of 22. To someone who loves travel, writing and adventure, Dalrymple's life on the road seems like out of a fairy tale. For two college students to be able to set out on a journey from England to Jerusalem, follow the Silk Route all the way up to China, on a budget of merely 700 pounds, seems to me to be a mixture of fond hope and absolute madness. But it works. This is more than just the tale of some hippies who want to backpack around the subcontinent. William and his companion (first Laura, then Louisa) are serious students of history, whose travel Bibles are the Travels of Marco Polo and other (more obscure) works about travel in Asia rather than Lonely Planet guides. Though William has visited the subcontinent before, he learns valuable lessons in cross-border travel (namely, how to go undetected while crossing borders illegally), bribe-giving and favour-taking, and cultural norms. Nor does he disguise his complete lack of appreciation of certain places. He is honest about his crankiness at hindrances such as boring, lifeless towns, cross-border tactics and the people he has to trust with them, miles and miles of never ending desert, lack of colour, food and sleep. His relief when he leaves the Afghan landscape to enter into Pakistan is palpable, and he does not hold back words. He is glad of the noise, colour and relative freedom the subcontinent brings him, after days of dreariness and having to watch his back. All that, however, does not stop him from admiring the architectural wonders he finds in Jerusalem, Turkey, Syria, etc. Towards the end of his journey, the pages are turned faster, only because he is being hounded by the police for entering into forbidden areas of China illegally. The book, I thought, ends too soon, but the pace fits the events and the stress of rushing the last few days. This book displays the author's lack of maturity when it comes to describing certain things or dismissing certain others, a tendency he has refined in his later, more researched works. But what comes through in all of his works, as I see it, is an unapologetic honesty. Never mind what he says in irritability of dry, desert-like landscape. One of the most outstanding observations comes while he is in Jerusalem, and only he has the guts to make it: "The Holy City has had more atrocities committed in it, more consistently, than any other town in the world. Sacred to three religions, the city has witnessed the worst intolerance and self-righteousness of all of them."

[cestovatela · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book taught me a travel writing lesson -- if you're going to write about buildings, you need to describe how seeing them made you feel, not what they looked like. I found myself skimming through a lot of long descriptions of obscure historical buildings with architectural terms I couldn't understand. I often felt frustrated with the pace of the book. This is not the story of a long, careful expedition down the route of Marco Polo; it's a whirlwind trip that doesn't give the author long enough to really explore the areas he's writing about. Local people with poor English are mostly a source of amusement and we don't get much sense of every day life in the places he describes. That said, the few places where he stopped to linger are vivid and well-done. Near-extinct tribal cultures and ancient Silk Road cities come alive, and so do his fascinating British travel partners.

[name99_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

All you'd expect from a good travel book: history, geography, anthropology, humor, human interest. Thoroughly recommended.

[mjw_6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of those rare travel books so evocative and atmospheric that the reader can smell the markets and the dusty streets of which the author writes. Note that said author was only 22 when he wrote this - many far older would consider a book of this calibre the pinnacle of their writing career - but for Dalrymple, it was his entry onto the scene. Sigh...