ANDRZEJ SAPKOWSKI

Harrumph! The Polish novelist discusses his bestselling Witcher books

- Words by Jonathan Wright /// Portrait by Torsten Silz

ARARE FEW INTERVIEWEES TREAT questions with a charmingly affable grumpiness. They include Andrzej Sapkowski. For evidence, consider his response when SFX asks if he was surprised by the success of his Witcher stories. “Please forgive my honesty,” he says, before describing the question as an “attempt to force a confession”. “Confessio est regina probationum, as they say - 'the confession is the queen of evidence'. If I answer affirmatively that I was surprised, it'll be evidence of false modesty, with an emphasis on 'false'. If I answer negatively, it'll be evidence of narcissistic cockiness. But I'm not bothered and I'll answer because I don't give a damn about such evidences. The answer is: yes, I was surprised.”

Sapkowski’s response is, on reflection, perhaps the one you'd expect. When he first introduced the world to the magically enhanced monster wrangler Geralt of Rivia via a short story published in Fantastyka, a Polish SFF magazine, it was 1986. Though the Geralt stories gained a cult following in Poland and, as time went on, across central and eastern Europe, it would be another 21 years before the first English translation. His has not been an overnight success.

The books (helped along by the Netflix adaptation) are now bestsellers across the world. The arrival this year of a new novel starring Geralt - a second prequel to the pentalogy first published in Poland between 1994 and 1999 - is a big deal. So why did he want to return to this universe?