In Xanadu

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In Xanadu is a 1989 travel book by William Dalrymple.

Unlike typical travel books, In Xanadu traces the path taken by Marco Polo from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to the site of Shangdu, famed as Xanadu in English literature, in Outer Mongolia.

This was an attempt to reach Asia from the UK. The journey was taken on a multitude of types of transport and lasted for over six months. The purpose of the journey as outlined in the book was to investigate the world of the Silk Road even though the author never made it anywhere close to many of the major posts on the Silk Road such as Xian, Dunhuang, etc.

The book, which was written when the author was only 22, received rapturous reviews and won numerous awards, and established Dalrymple as a major new arrival on the British literary scene. The great Patrick Leigh Fermor, regarded by the author as the greatest living travel writer, chose In Xanadu as his book of the Year in the Spectator and wrote, "William Dalrymple's In Xanadu carries us breakneck from a predawn glimmer in the Holy Sepulchre right across Asia... It is learned and comic, and a most gifted first book touched by the spirits of Kinglake, Robert Byron and E. Waugh." Sir Alec Guinness agreed, and in the Sunday Times called the book "The delightful, and funny, surprise mystery tour of the year."