Andrzej Sapkowski

Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy author best known for The Witcher series, following Geralt of Rivia, a monster-hunting mutant mercenary navigating a morally ambiguous, politically fractured medieval-fantasy world. Beginning with short stories collected in The Last Wish and continuing through the core Witcher Saga novels (Blood of Elves through The Lady of the Lake, plus the later-written prequel Season of Storms), Sapkowski's work is distinguished by dense political intrigue, morally gray characters, and prose that draws heavily on Slavic folklore rather than the more common Western European fantasy tradition. The series became a global phenomenon well beyond literary fantasy circles thanks to the enormously popular Witcher video game trilogy from CD Projekt Red and the Netflix television adaptation The Witcher, which introduced Geralt, sorceress Yennefer, and princess Ciri to a vast new international audience.

A former economist and translator before turning to fiction, Sapkowski began writing Witcher stories in the 1980s for a Polish science-fiction magazine short-story competition, and the series' commercial and critical success in Poland preceded its Western breakthrough by many years, with English translations lagging well behind original publication. New readers should start with The Last Wish, the first short-story collection, since it establishes the character and world before the more heavily serialized Saga novels. He continues to write in the Witcher universe and other fiction.