THE LOVE STORY of Marco Polo and
the daughter of Kubla Khan.
"Ivory, apes and
peacocks," spices, jewels, porcelains and silks, pad-footed camel-trains,
strange seas and islands of the East, the land of Kubla Khan—.
Venice, the Great, queen of the
Mediterranean, and of the western world; gathering place of nations, seething
with rich promise and adventure, with color, grandeur, squalor, danger, and
dreamy, maddening perfume: Magic!
But there is more, much more. All
this is projected upon a background so strange to it, so unexpected, so
heightening the poignancy of every stroke in the picture that it is but just
and sober speech to call it a bit of genius to have done this thing: for the
story is wonderfully told by an Ulster Scotch Irishman, glorious old Malachi of
the Glens.
The grim, gaunt, prideful,
touchy, fiery, poetic, tender soul of the Ulster Scot, with its eager unspent
imagination, its uncanny human insight, interprets the richness of that great
day of the Bride of the Sea when Venice dominated the seething life of Europe
and was powerful in the East; when she sent forth the Polos to Kubla Khan, and
Marco, the youth, followed them.
Messer Marco Polo, first
published in 1921, was a best-seller and 32 printings have been made of the
book. It has continued to sell steadily through the years and has, in fact, become
a minor classic.
This special edition of MESSER
MARCO POLO has been made available to the Armed Forces of the United States
through an arrangement with the original publisher, D. Appleton-Century
Company, Inc., New York.
Armed Services Editions, Inc., a non-profit
organization sponsored by the Council on Books in Wartime