The Travels of Mendes Pinto

By Fernão Mendes Pinto

Book Overview

This text, ostensibly the autobiography of Portugese explorer Fern o Mendes Pinto, came second only to Marco Polo's work in exciting Europe's imagination of the Orient. Chronicling adventures from Ethiopia to Japan, Travels covers twenty years of Mendes Pinto's odyssey as a soldier, a merchant, a diplomat, a slave, a pirate, and a missionary, and continues to overwhelm questions about its source with the sheer enjoyment of its narrative.

" T]here is plenty here for the modern reader. . . . The vivid descriptions of swashbuckling military campaigns and exotic locations make this a great adventure story. . . . Mendes Pinto may have been a sensitive eyewitness, or a great liar, or a brilliant satirist, but he was certainly more than a simple storyteller."--Stuart Schwartz, The New York Times

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226669513
• ISBN13: 9780226669519
• Release Date: May 1990
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 752 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 1.7" x 7.0"