The Peregrination of Fernão Mendes Pinto, soldier of fortune, trader, pirate, agent, ambassador. During twenty-one years in Ethiopia, Persia, Malaya, India, Burma, Siam, China, Japan, sailing uncharted oriental seas, he was five times shipwrecked, thirteen times captured, sixteen times enslaved. He met a saint, repented his ways, returned home and wrote his story for his children and for posterity.

Born around 1510, Fernão Mendes Pinto was the most articulate of the Portuguese trader-adventurers who swarmed through the Orient in the wake of Vasco da Gama. Here his story has been abridged and brilliantly translated by Michael Lowery, and is introduced by Dr Luis Sousa Rebelo.