In Invisible Cities by Italian novelist Italo Calvino, Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan stories about 55 cities he visited and the dialogue between the Italian traveler and Chinese emperor touches upon a wide range of topics, mostly in prose form. The two men seem to take different meanings from what the other is saying.

I never read Calvino's poetic book, first published in 1972. But Chinese novelist Xue Yiwei's book, Traveling Along With Marco Polo - Thoughts about Invisible Cities, an interpretation of Calvino's novel, provided me with some insight.

What I find is both strange and interesting is the fact that Marco Polo, as a traveler, talks about cities with an emperor who led his nomadic cavalry to conquer a large part of Asia and Europe. Kublai Khan was definitely not an urban man and in Xue's interpretation, the 55 cities are ones of lust, power and violence, more in keeping with what the emperor envisages.