The Journeyer

“Jennings combines inexhaustible research with the yarn-spinner’s art, drawing indelible portraits of Marco [Polo] . . . on the long journey. Stunning.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Marco Polo was nicknamed “Marco of the millions” because his Venetian countrymen took the grandiose stories of his travels to be exaggerated, if not outright lies. As he lay dying, his priest, family, and friends offered him a last chance to confess his mendacity, and Marco, it is said, replied “I have not told the half of what I saw and did.”

Now, in his novel The Journeyer, New York Times–bestselling author Gary Jennings has imagined the half that Marco left unsaid as even more adventurous than the alleged tall tales. From the streets of medieval Venice to the sumptuous court of Kublai Khan, from the perfumed sexuality of the Levant to the dangers and rigors of travel along the Silk Road, Marco meets all manner of people, survives all manner of danger, and becomes an almost compulsive collector of customs, languages and women.

Reimagined with all the splendor, the love of adventure, the zest for the rare and curious that are Jennings’s hallmarks, The Journeyer is the epic account of the greatest real-life adventurer in human history.

“Superb.” —The New York Times

“Astonishing and titillating.” —The Chicago Tribune

“Fabulous. . . . Sumptuous and exceedingly bawdy.” —The Washington Post

“Pound for pound, The Journeyer is a classic.” —Gene Lyons, Newsweek

“Perfect entertainment.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

“An impressively learned gem of the astounding and the titillating.” —Chicago Tribune Book World