A collection of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher stories, The Last Wish, has been published by the Egyptian publishing house Aser Al-Kotob. The author of the translation is Josef Sh’hadeh. The translation was supported by the Book Institute under the ©POLAND Translation Programme.

“The Last Wish” is a novella-structured embedded narrative short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski about the famous Witcher Geralt of Rivia, which includes the works: “The Voice of Reason”, “The Witcher”, “A Grain of Truth”, “The Lesser Evil”, “A Question of Price”, “The Edge of the World” and “The Last Wish”. Together with the short stories from the ‘Sword of Destiny’ volume, they form the introduction to the five-volume Witcher saga, but they can also be read successfully on their own.

“The Last Wish” has been translated into 20 languages, but Arabic has not yet featured.

Born in 1948, Andrzej Sapkowski is one of the most prominent Polish fantasy writers, author of books about the Witcher Geralt, as well as, among others, the so-called Hussite trilogy, which includes the novels “Narrenturm”, “The God-fighters” and “Lux perpetua”. Thanks to the adaptation of The Witcher’s adventures into computer games, created by the CD Projekt Red studio, his work is known and admired all over the world.

The ©POLAND Translation Programme is one of the flagship programmes of the Book Institute. Its aim is to promote Polish literature around the world by providing financial support for the publication of Polish books in translation into foreign languages.

Foreign publishers can use the obtained grant to finance part of the costs of publishing a work, including, among others, translating the work from Polish into another language, purchasing copyright licences and printing the book.

In 2023 alone, the Book Institute has subsidised 229 foreign editions of Polish books to be published by publishers from 46 countries, to which it has allocated almost PLN 5 million.

Adrian Andrzejewski