The Wax Child

' The Wax Child proves Olga Ravn’s ahead of the game. She's the strangest - and best - young novelist in Europe' Telegraph, The Greatest Books of 2025 'Something truly special. A wonderfully weird novel full of lines that will rattle around in your brain' Sunday Times, Best Books of 2025 ' An incantation that explores womanhood, motherhood and bodily autonomy. Martin Aitken’s mesmerising, exquisitely precise translation is, literally, breathtaking.' Irish Times, Books of the Year 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. ‘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 'Addictive and unsettling' Claire-Louise Bennett

' The Wax Child proves Olga Ravn’s ahead of the game. She's the strangest - and best - young novelist in Europe' Telegraph, The Greatest Books of 2025 'Something truly special. A wonderfully weird novel full of lines that will rattle around in your brain' Sunday Times, Best Books of 2025 ' An incantation that explores womanhood, motherhood and bodily autonomy. Martin Aitken’s mesmerising, exquisitely precise translation is, literally, breathtaking.' Irish Times, Books of the Year 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. ‘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 'Addictive and unsettling' Claire-Louise Bennett

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NBCC GREGG BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE In seventeenth-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man who gives them dark powers: they can steal people's happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or death. They are all in danger of the stake. The Wax Child, narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze Kruckow, is an unsettling horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of premodern Europe. Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland in the seventeenth century. Full of lush storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn also weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026 SHORTLISTED FOR THE NBCC GREGG BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE In seventeenth-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man who gives them dark powers: they can steal people's happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or death. They are all in danger of the stake. The Wax Child, narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze Kruckow, is an unsettling horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of premodern Europe. Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland in the seventeenth century. Full of lush storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn also weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.