In Xanadu

A Quest

William Dalrymple

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English

Flamingo
27 September 1990

Travel & holiday; Travel writing

One of the most successful, influential and acclaimed travel books of recent years from the author of ‘Return of a King’, which has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize.

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.

By: William Dalrymple
Imprint: Flamingo
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 250g
ISBN: 9780006544159
ISBN 10: 0006544150
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 27 September 1990
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Author Website: http://www.williamdalrymple.uk.com

In Xanadu won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and the Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award, and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. Dalrymple's second book, City of Djinns, won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. His third, From the Holy Mountain, was published in April 1997, and won the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Award and the Thomas Cook Award. His latest book, The Age of Kali, was published in 1998.

Reviews for In Xanadu: A Quest

An absorbing account of an eccentric pilgrimage to that place of fertile ground and incense-bearing trees where Kubla Khan did a stately pleasure-dome decree. Starting in Jerusalem, Dalrymple and his party travelled across the breadth of Asia, their guide book being the slightly out-of-date Travels of Marco Polo, first published 700 years ago. The ruins of Kubla Khan's pleasure-dome, by the way, are still there on the Mongolian Steppes. (Kirkus UK)