Jasna Horvat - Villion

The novel Villion by contemporary Croatian author Jasna Horvat is set in the year when the great ruler Kublai Khan and his confidant Marco Polo reach a parting of the ways. After the 17-years service in Kublai-Khan’s Court, Marco Polo pleads to be allowed to return to the Kingdom of Croatia. Kublai Khan insists on Marco explaining the reasons why he should let him return home, which is at the same time the occasion for this fellowhisp at the very end of Kublai Khan’s life. The novel Villion is adorned with numerous quotations from Coleridge’s poem Kublai Khan or A Vision in a Dream, Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, Jorge Luis Borges’s The Dream of Coleridge or Calvin’s Invisible Cities and many others. With these quotes, the novel becomes a literature catalogue of major world writers dealing with Kublai Khan and Marco Polo as the main theme in their literary texts. All of the above mentioned leads to the conclusion that the novel Villion connects the Great Empire with today’s China, and today’s China with cultural achievements of the Silk Route as pivotal, all-time link between East and West.