The Wax Child
From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
'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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ravn (My Work) draws on the true story of a 17th-century Danish noblewoman beheaded for witchcraft, in this masterful blend of history and horror. It's narrated by an omniscient wax doll made by Christenze Kruckow, a 30-something virgin who lives at Nakkebølle Manor in Funen, Denmark. By 1615, the mistress of the manor, Anne Bille, has given birth to 15 babies, all of whom were stillborn or died shortly after birth. When Anne accuses Christenze of witchcraft, she flees to the city of Aalborg. There, she's instantly attracted to a stranger named Maren Kneppis, and they kiss. Maren then invites Christenze to a series of all-night "carding fests," during which several women gather to spin wool and talk about their troubles. They also use Christenze's doll to cast spells on others, until they're caught by one of the husbands and Christenze is again accused of witchcraft, along with the other women. From here, Ravn's depiction of the draconian criminal justice system is gripping and well researched, from the bloodthirsty king whose lieutenant serves the arrest warrants to the procedures of Aalborg's provincial court. The main event, though, is the spectacularly demented doll, who channels a mysterious rebellious power inspired by Christenze and her cohort and by their grisly fate. Or, as the doll puts it in describing the hush that fell over the courtroom at the thought of the convicted Maren being burned at the stake: "It retained as yet a generative force that could be harnessed and put to use." This devilishly subversive feminist anthem is one of a kind.
