Johannes Schiltberger

Not overly enthralling - the author sticks to a very factual narrative without much personality, and especially at the start, where he's reciting the seemingly endless lists of battles held and victorious personnages he was captured by, it fair drowns in names.

But after a while he gets more into describing the various countries and customs he lived among. Little factoids about pelicans; a vivid description of a marble palace as seeming to one who's never been there before as if the stone is all covered in water; a list of all the holy sites in Jerusalem followed (with barely a period for breath) by a description of how to recognise real basalm grown in Egypt; several chapters on Islam, and on the Greek Orthodox church, and the Armenian church; and then abruptly he manages to escape and recites his itinerary on the way home.

Half the book is fulsome notes by a few layers of successive editors, so his account is a quick read.

It's not clear which of the editors it was who translated a particularly "obscene" passage (about one culture's methods of ensuring brides are virgins) into Latin instead of into English, but I look askance at whoever it was.… (more)