The Witcher

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This article is about the books by Andrzej Sapkowski. For the computer game, see The Witcher (computer game).
Movie poster
Movie poster

The Witcher or the Hexer (Polish: Wiedźmin), a professional monster killer named Geralt, is a character created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. Geralt and other witchers appear in Sapkowski's three short story collections and "The Witcher Saga" ("Saga o wiedźminie"), series comprising five novels. The stories and novels have been translated into Czech, Slovak, German, Russian, Lithuanian, French and Spanish. An English translation of the Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) short story collection is slated for publication by Gollancz in April 2007.

Witchers are sterile mutants with supernatural abilities, who receive special training and preparation. During their training they are also taught to suppress their feelings, which leads many people to believe that they have no emotions. Geralt, the central character in Sapkowski's stories, is said in the stories to be one of the best witchers.

Alternatively, the word warlock has been used informally in English translations, while "witcher", being a neologism in English (as wiedźmin is in Polish) arguably describes better the spirit of Geralt's profession. Witcher is used by the makers of a computer game based on the books and it was chosen for the English translation of The Last Wish. Sapkowski himself for years preferred the translation hexer (as in German translation), but recently agreed to witcher.[citation needed]

In the Witcher fictional universe, "witcher" was a derogatory term constructed from the word witch (wiedźma) and used by the magicians to describe males with a limited magical abbillity.

Contents

[edit] Books

[edit] Short story collections

The witcher series started as a series of short stories, at first published in Fantastyka, a Polish science fiction magazine. The first short story, "Wiedźmin" ("The Witcher") (1986), was written for a contest held by the magazine, where it won third place. The first four stories of Geralt — and the story "Droga, z której się nie wraca" ("The Road with No Return"), which took place in the same world, but dozens of years before the witcher stories — were originally collected in a short story collection titled Wiedźmin (out of print and now obsolete; all fifteen short stories were later collected in three books published by superNOWA.)

  • Miecz przeznaczenia (Sword of Destiny) (1992)
  • Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) (1993)
  • Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna (Something Ends, Something Begins) (2000)

[edit] Novels

The Blood of the Elves series proper consists of the five novels about Geralt, in which Sapkowski links together the plotlines begun in the short stories, and adds new ones. Apart from Geralt himself, another central character is Princess Ciri. Their story is set against the background of the struggle of the Northern Kingdoms against the Nilfgaard Empire.

  • Krew elfów (Blood of the Elves) (1994)
  • Czas pogardy (Time of Disdain) (1995)
  • Chrzest ognia (Baptism of Fire) (1996)
  • Wieża jaskółki (The Swallow's Tower) (1997)
  • Pani jeziora (Lady of the Lake) (1999)

[edit] Comic books

In 1993-1995, Sapkowski's stories were adapted into six comic books by Maciej Parowski (story), Bogusław Polch (art), and Sapkowski himself. They are:

  • Droga bez powrotu (The Road with No Return, based on the short story "Droga, z której się nie wraca")
  • Geralt (based on the short story "Wiedźmin")
  • Mniejsze złol (Lesser Evil, based on a short story of the same title)
  • Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish, based on a short story of the same title)
  • Granica możliwości (The Limit of Possibility, based on a short story of the same title)
  • Zdrada (Betrayal, based on an "unused idea for a short story")

[edit] Film and television

The Hexer is also the international title of both a Wiedźmin movie (2001) and television series (2002) directed by Marek Brodzki, written by Michał Szczerbic, and produced by Lew Rywin. The role of Geralt was played by Michał Żebrowski, and the music was composed by Grzegorz Ciechowski. The film was essentially the then-unreleased TV series chopped into about 2 hours, and received very poor reviews from both fans and critics.

The 13-episode TV series came out the following year. The series was much more coherent than the confusing movie, but was still considered a failure mostly due to the film's already bad reputation. The TV series has been unofficially released in dubbed English on the Internet.

[edit] Games

In 2001 a role-playing game called Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni (The Witcher: A Game of Imagination), based on Sapkowski's books, was published by MAG. A second edition of the game is currently in production.

A computer role-playing game based on Sapkowski's saga called The Witcher is in the development stage by CD Projekt, and is slated for release in the summer of 2007 as published by Atari worldwide.

[edit] References

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    [edit] External links

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