The Wax Child

It was a black night in the year 1620 when Christenze Krukow made the wax child, when she melted down beeswax and set it in the image of a small human. For days, she carried it tucked beneath her arm, shaping it with the warmth of her flesh, giving it life. She fashioned for it eyes and ears that cannot open, and yet – it watches and listens.

It looks on as Christenze is haunted by rumour, it hears what the people whisper. It sees how, in the candlelight, she gazes with love at her friends, and hears the things they say in the shadows. It knows pine forest, misty fjord and the crackle of the burning pyre. It observes the violence in men’s eyes and the cruelty of their laws. In time, it begins to understand that once a suspicion of witchcraft has taken hold, it can prove impossible to shake…

Based on an infamous seventeenth century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is the extraordinary new novel from Olga Ravn, one of the most acclaimed and original writers at work today: a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.

Review

The Wax Child proves Olga Ravn’s ahead of the game. She's the strangest - and best - young novelist in Europe ― Telegraph

Something truly special. A wonderfully weird novel full of lines that will rattle around in your brain. ― Sunday Times

Olga Ravn is a master and an alchemist. There's nobody else doing quite what she does -- Samantha Harvey

I gulped The Wax Child down and dreamed wild dreams about it. Just brilliant. -- Max Porter

Gorgeously mercurial. The best historical fiction can turn the driest archival fact into revelation, and here is proof. ― TLS

Addictive and unsettling -- Claire-Louise Bennett

An instant classic that feels passed down from centuries ago and yet utterly unique, fresh, and modern. Another stunning, surreal journey from an author who seems to never disappoint -- Jeff VanderMeer

Drawing on folklore, superstition, gossip and historic truth, frequently blending the borders between all four, The Wax Child weaves its strange awful magic like a spell ― Daily Mail

A spellbinding tale of loss and longing. A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style. ― Kirkus

Sinister magic and folk-horror combine into a novel that is as creepingly atmospheric as it is formally impressive. ― Foyles Best Translated Fiction of 2025

About the Author

Olga Ravn (Author)
Olga Ravn is one of Denmark’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Her novel The Employees was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, the Ursula K.Le Guin Prize and longlisted for the National Book Awards and the Dublin Literary Award. Her novel My Work won the Politikens Literature Prize in 2021 and led to changes in the country’s maternity rights. She has also written shorter pieces for the New Yorker, the Paris Review and Granta.

Martin Aitken (Translator)
Martin Aitken has translated the works of many Scandinavian writers, among them Karl Ove Knausgaard, Helle Helle, Hanne Ørstavik and Olga Ravn. He lives in Denmark.