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Andrzej Sapkowski books come with a problem few fantasy shelves have: the order to read the Witcher books in, the order they were published in Poland, and the order English readers actually received them are three different lists. Sword of Destiny came out in Polish a year before The Last Wish but reads second. English publishers then translated The Last Wish and Blood of Elves first and left Sword of Destiny until 2015, by which point three of the five novels were already out in English. That tangle is the main reason readers start in the wrong place, and untangling it is the first job of this page.

It’s easy to grab Blood of Elves because it’s the first novel, and to skip the two story collections the entire saga is built on. That’s the one mistake this guide exists to prevent. Beyond the order, it walks every book Sapkowski has in English, with verdicts drawn from the long consensus of his readers, explains the two translators and the coming retranslations, and covers the shelf beyond Geralt: Crossroads of Ravens, the 2024 prequel that reopened the series after eleven years, and the Hussite Trilogy, a historical fantasy that is far less read in English than it deserves.

The Witcher saga holds its place on my best fantasy books list, trading blows there with George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and readers who want more long commitments of that weight will find them on the best fantasy series list. What follows is the complete tour of the Andrzej Sapkowski books, from a third-prize contest story printed in 1986 to the newest novel.

The Short Version

Read The Last Wish first, then Sword of Destiny, then the five saga novels in order: Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow and The Lady of the Lake. Whatever else you do, don’t start with Blood of Elves. The novels assume you already know Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri, and the two collections are where those relationships are built.

Season of Storms and Crossroads of Ravens are standalone prequels written long after the saga. Read Season of Storms after The Lady of the Lake, because its epilogue takes place years after the saga ends, and read Crossroads of Ravens whenever you want the young Geralt, ideally after the collections. Once the Witcher books are done, the Hussite Trilogy (The Tower of Fools, Warriors of God, Light Perpetual) is the next shelf, and it reads strictly in order.

Andrzej Sapkowski Books in Order

The table lists the Andrzej Sapkowski books by first publication in Polish, with the first English edition in the notes, whichever of the UK and US editions came out first.

Year	Title	Series or type	Notes
1990	Wiedźmin	Witcher stories	The first collection, Polish only
1992	Sword of Destiny	The Witcher, stories	Read second, English 2015
1993	The Last Wish	The Witcher, stories	Read first, English 2007
1994	Blood of Elves	The Witcher saga, book 1	English 2008
1995	Time of Contempt	The Witcher saga, book 2	English 2013
1995	Świat króla Artura. Maladie	Essay and novella	Arthurian essay plus a Tristan novella
1995	Oko Yrrhedesa	Role-playing game book	Polish only
1996	Baptism of Fire	The Witcher saga, book 3	English 2014
1997	The Tower of the Swallow	The Witcher saga, book 4	English 2016, US title The Tower of Swallows
1999	The Lady of the Lake	The Witcher saga, book 5	English 2017
2000	Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna	Stories	Two Witcher stories, no English edition
2001	Rękopis znaleziony w Smoczej Jaskini	Nonfiction	A compendium of fantasy, later expanded
2002	The Tower of Fools	Hussite Trilogy, book 1	English 2020
2004	Warriors of God	Hussite Trilogy, book 2	English 2021
2006	Light Perpetual	Hussite Trilogy, book 3	English 2022
2009	Żmija	Novel	Viper, no English edition
2012	Maladie i inne opowiadania	Stories	Expanded reissue of the 2000 collection
2013	Season of Storms	The Witcher, standalone	English 2018
2024	Crossroads of Ravens	The Witcher, prequel	English 2025

Where to Start With Andrzej Sapkowski

For almost everyone the door is The Last Wish, the friendliest of the Andrzej Sapkowski books. Its six stories, held together by a frame, introduce Geralt, Yennefer, Dandelion and the moral arithmetic the whole series runs on, and the first of them tells you quickly whether his voice is for you. If it is, Sword of Destiny follows directly and the saga picks up from there. No shortcut improves on that order, because every later book assumes what the earlier ones set up.

Readers arriving from the games should know that CD Projekt Red’s trilogy is set after the saga, so the novels explain everything the games take for granted. Show watchers should start at the beginning too, rather than jumping ahead. Netflix’s first season drew on the two collections and the next three worked through Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire and The Tower of the Swallow, compressing and rearranging as television does, so even the familiar plot reads differently on the page.

If you want a taste before committing, Crossroads of Ravens is a complete story with no homework attached, and Gollancz pitches it at newcomers as well as longtime fans. Readers who like history more than monsters can begin with The Tower of Fools, which needs no Witcher background at all and shows a different Sapkowski, denser and more erudite and, by most accounts, just as funny. Season of Storms is the one door to avoid, since it works best as a return visit.

Andrzej Sapkowski’s Life, Briefly

Andrzej Sapkowski was born on June 21, 1948, in Łódź, Poland, and studied economics, specializing in foreign trade, at the University of Łódź. He spent more than two decades in foreign trade, eventually as a senior sales representative, and his English, German and Russian gave him access to Anglophone fantasy and science fiction that was largely unavailable in Polish in the 1970s. He came into the genre as a translator of science fiction, with Cyril M. Kornbluth’s “The Words of Guru” among his first.

In 1985 he came across a short story contest announced in Fantastyka, a Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine he says he hadn’t even known existed. His entry, “The Witcher,” took third prize and appeared in the magazine in 1986, which makes it a strong candidate for the most consequential third place the genre has handed out. More Geralt stories followed, collected in Wiedźmin (1990) and then in Sword of Destiny (1992) and The Last Wish (1993), and between 1994 and 1999 he wrote the five-novel saga. The SF Encyclopedia credits him with “an unprecedented impact on Polish Fantastika” of his era.

Alongside the fiction he edited Andrzej Sapkowski Przedstawia, a 1999-2008 line of Anglophone fantasy in Polish translation that included Robin Hobb, Patricia A. McKillip and Martha Wells, and in 2001 he published a compendium of the genre, Rękopis znaleziony w Smoczej Jaskini. The 2000s went to the Hussite Trilogy and the standalone Viper. He returned to Geralt with Season of Storms in 2013 and Crossroads of Ravens in 2024, by which time the games and the Netflix series had carried the Witcher worldwide, and Łódź, his birthplace, declared 2026 its Year of the Witcher, forty years after the first story appeared.

The Witcher Books in Order

The Witcher books read in this order: The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, The Lady of the Lake. Season of Storms and Crossroads of Ravens sit outside that run as standalone prequels. Season of Storms reads best after the saga, and Crossroads of Ravens works either as a taster up front or, better, after the two collections.

The confusion starts in Poland. Sapkowski’s first Geralt stories were collected in Wiedźmin, published by Reporter in 1990. The publisher superNOWA then issued Sword of Destiny in 1992, and in 1993 The Last Wish, which kept four of the 1990 book’s five stories, added new ones and a frame story, and replaced the old collection as the official first volume. So Sword of Destiny came out first but reads second: its stories take place after those in The Last Wish, its title story is where Geralt meets Ciri, and its closing story leads straight into Blood of Elves.

The saga itself ran from Blood of Elves in 1994 to The Lady of the Lake in 1999. Season of Storms (2013) is set between stories in The Last Wish, but its epilogue takes place long after the saga, which is why it reads best last. Crossroads of Ravens (2024) goes back further in Geralt’s own life than any other book, to his first mission out of Kaer Morhen, and assumes no prior reading at all.

How English Publishing Scrambled the Order

English readers got a third sequence. Gollancz published Danusia Stok’s translation of The Last Wish in 2007 and her Blood of Elves in 2008, with Orbit’s American editions following in 2008 and 2009. David French took over with Time of Contempt (2013) and Baptism of Fire (2014), and only then, in 2015, did Sword of Destiny reach English, after three of the novels. For seven years, English readers went from the first collection straight into the saga without the book in which Geralt and Ciri meet.

French went on to translate The Tower of the Swallow (2016), The Lady of the Lake (2017), Season of Storms (2018) and Crossroads of Ravens (2025), so the English shelf has two translators, each with their own choices of names and phrasing. That is about to change. New French translations of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves were announced for 2026, and Orbit now lists both for 2027, which will put the whole series in one English voice.

The first story has also circulated in English under other titles, as “The Hexer,” translated by Agnieszka Fulińska, in the anthology Chosen by Fate (2000), and as “Spellmaker” in Michael Kandel’s own translation for his anthology A Polish Book of Monsters (2010). None of that affects the reading order above. It just explains why the internet keeps arguing about something that shouldn’t be an argument.

The Witcher Story Collections

The two collections are where the Witcher books began and, by wide agreement, where Sapkowski is at his sharpest. They’re linked stories rather than novels, built on fairy tales taken apart and put back together wrong, and they set up every relationship the saga depends on, so this is where to start.

The Last Wish (1993)

Ostatnie życzenie · 1993 · translated by Danusia Stok · 2007

The Last Wish is the right first Witcher book and, for many readers, the best of all the Andrzej Sapkowski books. It collects six stories inside a frame, “The Voice of Reason,” in which a wounded Geralt recovers at a temple of the goddess Melitele under the eye of the priestess Nenneke, and the past comes back to him in episodes.

The method is the fairy tale taken apart from the inside. “The Witcher” reworks a Polish fairy tale about a princess cursed into a monster, “A Grain of Truth” turns Beauty and the Beast over to see what’s underneath, “The Lesser Evil” sets Geralt between a sorcerer and a Snow White figure running with seven dwarf bandits, and the title story releases a djinn whose wishes have teeth. Geralt earns his living in the gap between what people call a monster and what actually is one, and the stories run on argument as much as swordplay, long, needling conversations about the lesser evil and who gets to define it.

The book also introduces everyone who matters: Dandelion the bard, Yennefer of Vengerberg, and, in “A Question of Price,” the Law of Surprise that sets the whole saga in motion. As a story collection it can feel a little stop-start to readers who want a novel, since the frame keeps returning to the temple between episodes. It’s a small price, and this remains the book that tells you whether Sapkowski is for you.

Sword of Destiny (1992)

Miecz przeznaczenia · 1992 · translated by David French · 2015

Sword of Destiny is the second Witcher book in reading order, the earlier of the two collections in Polish, and the emotional hinge of the whole series. Its six stories follow on from The Last Wish, and where that book introduces the cast, this one starts collecting debts.

It opens with “The Bounds of Reason,” a dragon hunt that draws every opportunist in the region, and moves through “A Shard of Ice,” a bruising look at Geralt and Yennefer as a couple, “Eternal Fire,” a comic doppler caper in Novigrad, and “A Little Sacrifice,” a duke courting a mermaid with Andersen’s version firmly in view. Then the title story takes Geralt into the dryads’ forest of Brokilon, where he meets a runaway girl called Ciri, and “Something More” closes the book by leading straight into the novels. “A Little Sacrifice” was later loosely adapted into Netflix’s animated film Sirens of the Deep (2025).

The tone is more melancholy than The Last Wish and the stories run longer, so readers who loved the first book’s fairy-tale snap may find this one slower going. That’s the only real flaw. Among the Andrzej Sapkowski books it’s also the one English publishing treated worst, arriving in 2015, eight years after The Last Wish. Skip it, and Blood of Elves reads as if you’ve missed a volume, because you have.

The Witcher Saga

The five novels are one continuous story, published in Polish between 1994 and 1999, and they change the game completely, from episodic monster work to a war epic about a girl half the Continent wants to own. Ciri moves to the center, Geralt and Yennefer are scattered across a world sliding into invasion, pogroms and conspiracies about her bloodline, and Sapkowski spends as much time on refugees, field hospitals and the sordid politics of prophecy as on battles. Geralt spends surprising stretches of his own saga sidelined, which is a choice rather than an accident.

Readers expecting more of the collections can be wrong-footed by all this, and the people who love the saga tend to love it precisely for refusing to be tidy. It’s Sapkowski’s entry in the epic fantasy tradition, written from inside a very different literary culture, and it’s funnier and more cynical about destiny than most of its Anglophone peers. Read the five close together. They’re parts of one story rather than five standalone novels, and each one hands straight over to the next.

Blood of Elves (1994)

Krew elfów · 1994 · translated by Danusia Stok · 2008

Blood of Elves is the first novel of the saga, the winner of the first David Gemmell Legend Award in 2009, and the classic wrong door into the Andrzej Sapkowski books, so read the two collections before it. The story follows Ciri after Nilfgaard’s invasion of her grandmother’s kingdom, Cintra, has made her the most hunted child on the Continent. Emperor Emhyr wants her for dynastic reasons of his own, the Northern kings would rather she disappeared, and Geralt hides her at Kaer Morhen, where the last witchers train her and the sorceress Triss Merigold begins to understand what Ciri might be capable of. Netflix’s second season drew mainly on this book.

Yennefer takes over her education later in the book, while a mage called Rience hunts for anyone who knows where she is. The novel is mostly setup, a book of lessons, councils and slowly gathering menace with the war still on the horizon, and the Kaer Morhen chapters and the scenes between Ciri and Yennefer are among the best character writing in the series. The kings’ councils, meanwhile, show Sapkowski’s dry contempt for royalty in full flow.

Almost nothing resolves here, and readers who want the episodic energy of the collections can find it slow. Read it as the first act it is, because everything planted here pays off later.

Time of Contempt (1995)

Czas pogardy · 1995 · translated by David French · 2013

Time of Contempt is the second novel of the saga and the one where the war the first book promised finally breaks out. The kings of the North are manufacturing a pretext for war with Nilfgaard, Geralt is hunting the mage who has been hunting Ciri, and Yennefer is taking Ciri to the sorceresses’ school at Aretuza, on the island of Thanedd, just as a great conclave of mages gathers there.

The Thanedd chapters are the set piece most readers remember: a glittering political gathering run like a heist, with spymasters and sorcerers working every room and Geralt refusing, as ever, to pick a side. Ciri’s thread then takes her somewhere much harsher, and the title earns itself. This is also the first of the novels in David French’s translation, which carries the series from here on.

So much happens on Thanedd, from so many angles, that the politics can blur on a first read, and the book rewards a slower pace than its momentum invites. For anyone who found Blood of Elves slow, though, this is the payoff, and it’s widely regarded as the point where the Witcher books become a true epic. Netflix’s third season, released in two parts in 2023, was built on it.

Baptism of Fire (1996)

Chrzest ognia · 1996 · translated by David French · 2014

Baptism of Fire turns the saga into a road novel, and it’s the volume where Geralt finally gets a company worth traveling with. The story follows him out of the dryads’ forest of Brokilon, barely healed and set on finding Ciri, with Dandelion at his side and the archer Milva as their guide. A Nilfgaardian knight, Cahir, attaches himself against everyone’s wishes, and a courteous barber-surgeon called Regis joins them along the way. Netflix’s fourth season, the first with Liam Hemsworth as Geralt, adapted most of it in 2025, together with The Tower of the Swallow.

The fellowship is the book’s great pleasure, a band of people who shouldn’t get along arguing philosophy and logistics across a countryside the war has emptied, with some of Sapkowski’s best dialogue at every campfire. Elsewhere, Ciri is running with a gang of young outlaws under a borrowed name, and the sorceresses of the North are founding a secret lodge with designs of its own on her future.

This is a march through a war zone, and readers who want the plot to advance can find long stretches of it a walk. Its best scenes are the warmest in the saga, though, and the company is widely loved.

The Tower of the Swallow (1997)

Wieża Jaskółki · 1997 · translated by David French · 2016

The Tower of the Swallow is often called the darkest of the five novels and, for many readers, it’s the best constructed. Published in the US as The Tower of Swallows, it opens in a swamp, where an elderly hermit philosopher, Vysogota, finds a badly injured Ciri and nurses her back to health, and as she recovers she tells him what the last months have done to her.

That frame lets Sapkowski braid timelines and viewpoints with real confidence, moving between Ciri’s account, Geralt’s company pushing on through the war, and the agents and schemers closing in on both. Ciri’s thread is the hardest material in the series, with a bounty hunter on her trail who ranks among fantasy’s more frightening antagonists, and the book is unsparing about what violence does to the young.

The structure is also the obstacle. Readers who like a story told straight can find the shuffled chronology frustrating, and it’s the most demanding of the Witcher novels. Take it slowly and it repays the effort. Gollancz’s UK title, The Tower of the Swallow, is the more accurate rendering of the Polish, which refers to a single swallow, and either title gets you the same translation.

The Lady of the Lake (1999)

Pani Jeziora · 1999 · translated by David French · 2017

The Lady of the Lake is the conclusion of the saga, the most ambitious of the five novels, and the book readers have argued about since 1999. It opens on the shore of a lake, in a frame borrowed openly from Arthurian legend, and part of the story is told from far in the future, where the sorceress Nimue and her apprentice Condwiramurs study the legend of Geralt and Ciri as scholars of a distant past.

Inside that frame, Sapkowski brings every thread together. Geralt’s company winters in the knightly duchy of Toussaint, a fairy-tale court of wine and tournaments that The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion later borrowed as its setting, while the war reaches its largest battle, told from many viewpoints, a field hospital’s among them, rather than from a general’s tent. Ciri’s thread takes the saga somewhere it hasn’t been before.

What readers split over is the ending, which this page won’t touch beyond saying that it’s deliberate and that readers still argue about it. The long Toussaint interlude is the other common complaint, a comfortable pause at the point where many readers want speed. For anyone who has come this far, though, this is the book the Witcher books were building toward. Its Arthurian frame is also a gift to readers of the wider Arthurian legend shelf, a tradition Sapkowski knows well enough to have published an essay on it.

The Later Witcher Books

Sapkowski came back to Geralt twice after the saga, both times with standalone prequels rather than sequels, despite having said that the story ended with The Lady of the Lake. Neither needs the saga to make sense, but both read richer once you know what’s ahead for Geralt, and the second came with the promise of more.

Season of Storms (2013)

Sezon burz · 2013 · translated by David French · 2018

Season of Storms is a standalone Geralt adventure set between the stories of The Last Wish, and it’s the minor-key Witcher book, smaller, stranger and more cynical than the saga it was written after. The story follows Geralt from a monster fight into a run of bad luck in the kingdom of Kerack, where he’s arrested and loses his two witcher swords, and the hunt to get them back drags him into a royal succession feud and a conspiracy among sorcerers.

Its pleasures are the ones the collections have. Dandelion is at his most useful and his most insufferable, an affair with the sorceress Lytta Neyd, known as Coral, gives the book a sardonic romantic thread, and the local mages despise Geralt with real feeling. It reads fast, and it has the old episodic snap.

The consensus is that it’s a lesser book than the saga, closer to a long story than a novel of real weight, and most readers treat it as a side trip. Read it after The Lady of the Lake, though, because its short epilogue is set long after the saga and only lands once you’ve finished it. As a return visit to the Andrzej Sapkowski books that made the voice famous, it does exactly what it promises.

Crossroads of Ravens (2024)

Rozdroże kruków · 2024 · translated by David French · 2025

Crossroads of Ravens is the first new Witcher novel in eleven years and the earliest Geralt story in the series, a prequel that goes back to Geralt at eighteen, newly out of Kaer Morhen on his first mission. It came out in Poland in November 2024 and in English on September 30, 2025, and it won the Janusz A. Zajdel Award for the best novel of 2024.

The story follows a young witcher learning, job by job, how much the world despises the thing he has been made into. An elderly witcher, Preston Holt, takes him under his wing, and the road runs partly through the kingdom of Kaedwen. The resonances are the point: habits, scars and convictions readers know from the older Geralt, shown at their origin.

Polish reviewers were broadly positive, though they split on the ending. Gollancz pitches the book at newcomers as well as longtime fans, and it does work as a door, since it assumes nothing, but its best moments are echoes that pay out most for people who already know where the road leads. Read it as a taster if you must, or after the collections if you can wait. As the newest of the Andrzej Sapkowski books, it also carries a promise. Sapkowski has said there will be another, and in 2026 he reportedly told a festival audience that it would again center on Geralt, with no title or date yet.

The Hussite Trilogy

The Hussite Trilogy is the other Sapkowski, and the main reason to keep reading the Andrzej Sapkowski books after Geralt. Published in Polish between 2002 and 2006 and translated into English by David French between 2020 and 2022, it follows a young physician through the fifteenth-century Hussite Wars in Silesia and Bohemia, a real religious war rendered with real theology and real atrocity, with magic seeping in at the edges where the period’s own beliefs said it would.

It’s one story in three volumes and reads strictly in order. The Tower of Fools (Narrenturm, 2002) opens it, Warriors of God (Boży bojownicy, 2004) takes its hero deeper into the war itself, and Light Perpetual (Lux perpetua, 2006) brings the trilogy to its close. The SF Encyclopedia calls the final volume “a dynamic, erudite and stylistically impressive amalgam,” blending epic adventure with chivalric romance and the picaresque, and that description fits all three. The entry below covers the first book, which is where to start and the one to buy first.

The Tower of Fools (2002)

Narrenturm · 2002 · translated by David French · 2020

The Tower of Fools is the first book of the Hussite Trilogy and the best way into Sapkowski’s fiction beyond the Witcher. It won the Janusz A. Zajdel Award for 2002 and was nominated for the Nike, Poland’s major literary prize.

The story follows Reinmar von Bielau, known as Reynevan, a twenty-three-year-old Silesian who studied medicine, and some magic, in Prague. Caught with another man’s wife, he spends the novel on the run from the wronged husband’s family, from the Inquisition, which takes a keen interest in his magic, and from a lengthening list of other enemies, across a Silesia fraying under the pressure of the Hussite revolt next door in Bohemia. Picaresque is the right word: Reynevan is brave, romantic and a magnificent idiot, and the book drags him from one disaster to the next with real comic momentum.

It’s denser than the Witcher books, thick with Latin, heresy and real history, and readers without any background in the period will need some patience in the early chapters. Reynevan himself divides people. Grimdark Magazine’s James Tivendale found him closer to the bard Dandelion than to Geralt, which is exactly why some readers adore him and others want to shake him. For readers who like historical fiction with a streak of the uncanny, or fantasy with real history underneath, it’s the deep cut among the Andrzej Sapkowski books.

Viper and the Books Still Waiting for English

Viper (Żmija, 2009) is the one novel among the Andrzej Sapkowski books with no English edition, and it’s an outlier in every sense. Paweł Lewart, a Soviet warrant officer of Polish descent, serves at a remote outpost during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where a golden viper wakes a suppressed gift and he begins to see the country’s earlier invaders, from Alexander the Great’s army to the British. It’s a historical novel with a fantastic thread rather than a fantasy, its reception was mixed, and it won the Russian magazine Mir Fantastiki’s award for best foreign book. Until an English translation appears, it’s a book for readers of Polish.

The rest of the untranslated shelf is short fiction and nonfiction. Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna (2000), roughly “Something Ends, Something Begins,” collects stories including the two Witcher pieces that never made the main books, “A Road with No Return,” which is set before Geralt’s own story, and the title story. Neither has an official English translation, and the 2012 reissue, Maladie i inne opowiadania, expands the collection with two more stories and adds the author’s introductions.

Świat króla Artura. Maladie (1995) pairs an essay on Arthurian legend with “Maladie,” a novella drawn from the Tristan story that reached English as “The Malady,” in Wiesiek Powaga’s translation, in Lavie Tidhar’s anthology The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012) and in Gollancz’s 2014 ebook sampler The Malady and Other Stories. Rękopis znaleziony w Smoczej Jaskini (2001), roughly “The Manuscript Found in the Dragon’s Cave,” is a witty, erudite compendium of fantasy itself, and Oko Yrrhedesa (1995) is a role-playing game book.

Andrzej Sapkowski: Deep Dive & FAQ

What Runs Through Sapkowski’s Books

The lesser evil is the first thread, and the one every Witcher book keeps testing. Geralt’s professional creed is neutrality, take the money, kill the monster and stay out of politics, and the collections and the saga together are one long demonstration that neutrality is itself a choice with consequences. The second is the monster question. From the cursed princess of the first story onward, the real monsters are usually the people hiring the witcher, and the SF Encyclopedia notes how many of Geralt’s adventures address “prejudice against otherness,” whether its targets are elves, dwarves, mutants or anyone else a majority finds it convenient to hate.

The third is the old story turned over. Sapkowski reads fairy tales and legends the way a lawyer reads a contract, and Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, the Arthurian cycle and Tristan all come back from his pages with their assumptions exposed. His bestiary mixes Slavic folklore, from the striga of the first story to the kikimora, with Western myth, and that blend is a large part of why the Continent feels unlike Anglophone fantasy.

The fourth is voice. Sapkowski writes long, needling, funny dialogue, loves a learned digression, and tells his stories through frames, witnesses and chroniclers, from the temple in The Last Wish to Vysogota’s hut and the scholars of The Lady of the Lake, so that the legend is always being argued over while it is still happening. It’s the same voice in every one of the Andrzej Sapkowski books, the Hussite Trilogy included, and it’s the reason his readers stay.

Prizes and Honors

The Andrzej Sapkowski books have been collecting prizes for more than three decades. At home, he has won six Janusz A. Zajdel Awards, for the stories “The Lesser Evil” (1990), “The Sword of Destiny” (1992) and “In a Bomb Crater” (1993), and for the novels Blood of Elves (1994), The Tower of Fools (2002) and Crossroads of Ravens (2024), a span of thirty-four years. He received Polityka’s Passport award in 1997 and honorary citizenship of Łódź in 2008, The Tower of Fools was nominated for the Nike, Poland’s major literary prize, and in September 2025 the culture ministry awarded him the gold Gloria Artis medal for merit to culture.

Abroad, Blood of Elves won the first David Gemmell Legend Award in 2009, the prize named for David Gemmell, beating a shortlist that included Brandon Sanderson’s The Hero of Ages and Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings. Spain’s Ignotus Award for best anthology went to The Last Wish in 2003 and Sword of Destiny in 2004, the European Science Fiction Society named him a European Grand Master in 2010, and in 2016 he received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

Which Editions of the Witcher Books to Buy

The English editions of the Andrzej Sapkowski books come from two houses, Gollancz in the UK and Orbit in the US, with the same translations on both sides of the Atlantic and one title difference: Orbit calls the fourth novel The Tower of Swallows. Covers vary by printing, from game art to Netflix tie-ins, with no difference in the text, and Sapkowski publicly objected to the game-art US cover of Time of Contempt, which he felt had little to do with the book and which he had no say in.

The one edition decision that matters right now is the translation of the first two books. Danusia Stok’s versions of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves are the ones in print, and Orbit has David French’s new translations of both listed for 2027. If you’re buying after they appear, check the translator credit, and if you want a single consistent voice across the series, French’s are the ones to get. Collectors should know about Orbit’s 2021 illustrated hardcover of The Last Wish, with interior art by several award-winning artists, which uses the Stok translation.

Audiobook listeners are well served. Peter Kenny narrates the standard English audiobooks of the original eight Witcher books and The Tower of Fools, and Hachette is rolling out full-cast audio editions, starting with Crossroads of Ravens (listed for September 2026) and followed in November 2026 by Sword of Destiny and The Last Wish, the latter in David French’s new translation, ahead of the 2027 print and ebook editions. The Hussite Trilogy is in print from Gollancz and Orbit in David French’s translation, and readers of Polish can go straight to the superNOWA originals.

The Witcher on Screen and in Games

The Witcher has reached screens three ways: a Polish film and series in 2001 and 2002, CD Projekt Red’s games from 2007, and Netflix’s series from 2019. Here is where each stands as of October 2026, with the Andrzej Sapkowski books still the source all three draw on.

The Polish Film and Series

The first adaptation was Polish. Wiedźmin (2001), known in English as The Hexer, was directed by Marek Brodzki for Heritage Films with Michał Żebrowski as Geralt, and a thirteen-episode television series with the same lead followed in 2002. Critics and fans were broadly negative, praising the cast and the music while panning the plot and the effects, and Sapkowski, asked about the film, answered that he could reply only with a single short and obscene word. Both survive as curiosities for completists.

Netflix’s the Witcher

Netflix’s series, created by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich with Sapkowski as a creative consultant, premiered on December 20, 2019, with Henry Cavill as Geralt, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer and Freya Allan as Ciri. The first season drew on the two story collections, and the next three followed Blood of Elves (2021), Time of Contempt (2023, released in two parts) and Baptism of Fire with The Tower of the Swallow (October 30, 2025). Cavill left after the third season, and Liam Hemsworth, whose casting Netflix announced in October 2022, played Geralt in the fourth.

Netflix confirmed in April 2024 that the fifth season would be the last, and it was filmed in 2025 with Hemsworth returning. It had been expected in 2026, but in August 2026 Netflix dropped it from its 2026 promotions, and as of October 2026 there is no official date, with reports pointing to 2027. The franchise around it includes the animated films Nightmare of the Wolf (2021) and Sirens of the Deep (2025), the prequel miniseries Blood Origin (2022) and the special The Rats: A Witcher Tale (2025).

The CD Projekt Red Games

CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher (2007), The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) are sequels set after the saga, and by the studio’s own count in September 2026, Wild Hunt has sold more than 65 million copies and the series more than 90 million. Wild Hunt’s Blood and Wine expansion is set in Toussaint, the duchy from The Lady of the Lake, and a third expansion is scheduled for 2027.

The Witcher 4, with Ciri as its protagonist, has a planned release window of 2028. Sapkowski sold the game rights for a one-time fee rather than royalties, and after a public dispute over further payment the two sides reached a settlement in December 2019.

Questions About Andrzej Sapkowski

What Order Should I Read the Witcher Books In?

Start with The Last Wish, then Sword of Destiny, then the five novels: Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow and The Lady of the Lake. Don’t start with Blood of Elves, which assumes the collections. Season of Storms reads best after the saga because of its epilogue, and Crossroads of Ravens, a prequel about the eighteen-year-old Geralt, works as a taster or after the collections.

Why Was Sword of Destiny Published Before the Last Wish?

The Last Wish replaced an earlier book. Sapkowski’s first stories were collected in Wiedźmin in 1990, Sword of Destiny followed in 1992, and The Last Wish (1993) then reissued most of the 1990 stories with new material as the official first volume. Its stories take place before those in Sword of Destiny, so it reads first despite the later date.

What Is the Best Witcher Book?

Among all the Andrzej Sapkowski books, many readers would name one of the two story collections, The Last Wish for its fairy-tale invention or Sword of Destiny for its emotional weight. Among the novels opinion spreads wider, and The Lady of the Lake is the one readers argue about most. Blood of Elves won the first David Gemmell Legend Award, but it’s mostly setup, and the saga’s real power builds across all five.

Is the Witcher Series Finished?

The saga is complete: the five novels ended with The Lady of the Lake in 1999. Sapkowski has since added two standalone prequels, Season of Storms (2013) and Crossroads of Ravens (2024), and has said there will be another book. In 2026 he reportedly told a festival audience that it would again center on Geralt, but there is no title or release date yet.

When Is Season 5 of the Witcher Coming Out?

There’s no official date as of October 2026. The fifth and final season was filmed in 2025, with Liam Hemsworth returning as Geralt, and it had been expected in 2026, but Netflix dropped it from its 2026 promotions in August, and reports now point to 2027. The first four seasons adapted the two collections and the first four novels, the fourth combining Baptism of Fire with The Tower of the Swallow.

Who Translated the Witcher Books Into English?

Danusia Stok translated The Last Wish (2007) and Blood of Elves (2008). David French translated everything since, from Time of Contempt (2013) to Crossroads of Ravens (2025), and the Hussite Trilogy too. Orbit has French’s new translations of The Last Wish and Blood of Elves listed for 2027, which will give the whole series one English voice.

Do I Need to Read the Books Before Playing the Games?

No, but it helps a great deal. CD Projekt Red’s games are sequels set after the saga, so they assume you know characters and history that the books establish. The Witcher 3 leans especially hard on the novels’ cast, and its Blood and Wine expansion is set in Toussaint, from The Lady of the Lake. Reading first costs the games nothing and adds a lot.

What Else Has Andrzej Sapkowski Written?

Beyond the Witcher books, the main work is the Hussite Trilogy (The Tower of Fools, Warriors of God, Light Perpetual), a historical fantasy set during the Hussite Wars and translated into English between 2020 and 2022. His 2009 novel Viper, set during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, has no English edition, and the same goes for his compendium of fantasy and for the 2000 collection that holds his two remaining Witcher stories.

Where to Go Next

After the Andrzej Sapkowski books, readers who loved the moral grayness and the sardonic dialogue should go straight to the Joe Abercrombie books, where the First Law trilogy shares Sapkowski’s contempt for heroic posturing and his gift for characters arguing their way through atrocity. For the war epic on the grandest scale, the George R. R. Martin books guide covers the other great 1990s saga the Witcher is often compared with.

If it was the folklore that hooked you, the Naomi Novik books are the next stop, since Uprooted grows out of the Polish fairy tales Novik was raised on. And for the bleaker end of the genre in general, the dark fantasy books and grimdark books lists collect the shelves closest in temperament to Geralt’s Continent.

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