Andrzej Sapkowski, probably the best Polish fantasy writer, was born in 1948 in Łódź. He worked for a trade company. His first short story entitled "Wiedźmin" was published in 1986 in "Fantastyka" - at that time the only one Polish science fiction magazine (science fiction, because at that time there wasn't yet any fantasy literature in Poland). The story about the wiedźmin Geralt was so successful that Sapkowski created numerous of stories about him and later a cycle of five novels featuring Geralt. Those stories brought him great fame and success, not only in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic. They also were the beginning of the fantasy boom in Poland.
The title character of "Wiedźmin" is a man named Geralt - a mutant who is a professional monster killer. As a mutant he should be devoid of all human feelings but in the process of "creating" a cold monster killer something went wrong and Geralt is a person full of doubts, with his own ethical code, a bit resembling a private eye Philip Marlowe from Raymond Chandler's novels. The world in which Geralt lives is modelled on the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien, but it also owes much to Polish folk tales and to the history of our own "real" world.
