Can't think of a better way to start blogging than coming back for a while to one of my favourite books ever - The Witcher by a Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. I suppose it is fair to say that Sapkowski is to the world of Polish fantasy who Tolkien is to the English speaking world. Oh I remember the days when you could bet that there would be at least five people on the bus you were taking reading his books...Well, I won't even try to recall the number of earthly possessions I have lost on trains or bus stops I have missed cause there was just one more page till the end of a chapter...The Witcher saga is just impossible to put down...And it is not just because it was like a breath of fresh air with the unusual characters, such as the main character himself - a mutant monsters assassin Geralt with his gloomy peculiarities and strangly magnetic personality or absolutly not princessy Princess Ciri. I think Sapkowski managed to find that often elusive golden balance between popular and literature proper, if I may say so. As he emphasised himself many times, he likes to maks his readers work - he believes in a reader's intelligence to the extend of throwing in few untranslated passages in French or Latin every now and again, as a little brain teaser I suppose..And thesis have been written about The Witcher's clever play on Slavic mythology. At the same time Sapkowski's witty and ironic style of writing with subtle (and in fairness hilarious) references to modern times explain those people on the bus with his books in hand giggling away to themselves...Isn't it what great literature should be about after all? Not only make you ask these life defining questions but also or above all be enjoyable and simply pleasant to read?
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