The most famous of the Witcher stories is The Witcher (1994-1999) - a collection of five novels centred on the adventures of Geralt of Rivia. Written in a light style and a wonderful story language, and frequent references to well-known myths and legends - not only Polish, but also Scandinavian or British - makes it an interesting reading, but also instructive in terms of culture.

What is interesting is Geralt himself – a complex character that combines both elements of a benevolent hero and a villain prone to violence. The title character is a hunter of monsters, with a talent for getting involved in dirty work, which is often uninteresting to him. He gets out of trouble in one piece - thanks to his unique fighting talents and acquired in childhood superhuman psycho-physical skills. Serving Geralt is his closest friend, the bard Dandelion and his great love, sorceress Yennefer.

In 2000 came the idea to film the adventures of The Witcher. A feature film The Witcher premièred in 2001 with the leading role going to the Polish actor Michał Żebrowski. Problems with the production and a limited budget, led to a catastrophe – the film grossed only half of what was spent on its production. It was widely criticized for many things including narrative inconsistency, errors in the selection of the cast and costumes, the mediocre special effects (especially the rubber monsters). Nevertheless, a year later a TV series about the adventures of Geralt was released (which was filmed in parallel with the film). Unfortunately - not better in quality. The whole situation was best commented by Sapkowski himself who, when asked for an opinion on the filming of his works, said bluntly: This question could only be answered with one word, a vulgar one, albeit short.

Despite the cinematic failure, the golden years of The Witcher were coming in great strides. The turning point was 2007 when the Polish studio CD Projekt RED released a computer game based on the Witcher universe. The main character was, of course, none other than Geralt of Rivia. The game (called The Witcher of course) was a big hit, and turned out to be a great commercial success in Poland and abroad. The production was praised for many aspects including beautiful graphics, unique gameplay and engrossing, original storyline. In 2011 a second part of the series, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, was produced, whereas in 2015 a third, final part of the trilogy was released - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

On the wave of popularity of The Witcher game, Sapkowski wrote another part of the hero's adventures. In 2013 a book entitled Season of storms was published, telling the events before the first Witcher stories of 1986.

Currently, efforts are being made to remake a film about Geralt, this time on Hollywood scale. The production is being overseen by Tomek Bagiński - director and cartoonist, creator of animation to the computer version of The Witcher.

Do you know?

• The name The Witcher Saga was imposed on Sapkowski by the publisher. He himself preferred another title - Blood of the Elves, under which only the first volume of the saga was finally published...
• In 1993-95 six comics entitled The Witcher based on short stories Sapkowski were published by Bogusław Polch and Maciej Parowski.
• The first part of the game The Witcher achieved global sales of more than one million copies within a year of release. The Witcher 3 beat this result fourfold in the two weeks after its launch! It took them only one day of sales to cover the production cost of the game.
• With the launch of the first game, The Witcher card game also went on sale in stores.