The Wax Child (Voksbarnet)
Translated into English by Martin Aitken
‘Can you, or anyone else, honestly tell me that I have been involved in witchcraft?’
Aalborg 1620, the city of hate. A wax child tells the story of its lady, the noblewoman Christenze Kruckow, who, along with a group of women, is accused of witchcraft. Rumour has it that the devil has come to them in the shape of a tall headless man, that they can steal people's happiness, that they have performed unchristian acts resulting in illness and death. And once a rumour of witchcraft has taken hold, it's hard to shake.
THE WAX CHILD is a horror story about brutality and power, nature and magic, a portrait of fragile communities and a dizzying insight into the worldview that preceded the strict rationality of the modern world.
This is Olga Ravn's fourth novel. The story is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Nakkebolle on Funen and in Aalborg in the years 1595-1621. The book contains magical instructions and quotes from original sources such as letters, court documents, Scandinavian grimoires (book of spells) and ledgers.
“I wish I could bottle the experience of reading this utterly strange, mesmeric, eerie, short masterpiece about witchcraft, whose revelatory language and sheer inventiveness put me in mind of Anne Carson (…) Avid readers will know that quickening of the heartbeat, the hitched breath, that reader’s brand of goosebumps elicited by the realisation that whatever we read, the thing in our hands has it – that strange, in this case dark, magic”
– The Bookseller, fiction book of the Month highlight November 2025
“The author of International Booker Prize shortlisted The Employees and My Work delivers another stylistic swerve in The Wax Child, a wonderfully witchy tale, based on a real-life 17th century witch trial in Denmark. Sinister magic and folk-horror combine into a novel that is as creepingly atmospheric as it is formally impressive.”
– Foyles, Translated Fiction highlights
“With The Wax Child, Olga Ravn has written her best book to date. (...) The language is like wax in Olga Ravn's hands, and there is never any doubt that this genre-renewing historical novel is also the work of a poet. (...) Along the way, Olga Ravn shows herself to be both a wonderful bard and a deeply original storyteller with a very special ability to bring out the beauty that hides somewhere between the world of things and the world of poetry”
- Kristeligt Dagblad
“Olga Ravn's new novel is a powerful, poetry-infused piece of writing, a precisely written true crime about witch trials in 17th century Aalborg. (...) It is an impressive endeavour of stylishness and textuality in its coverage of a rather concentrated and precise subject”
- Berlingske
“Kapow for a staging! You feel the city's hateful atmosphere as strongly as you sense the stench of cabbage and herring. (... ) Olga Ravn writes in an other-worldly manner, beautifully and poetically about folk magic (…) Voksbarnet is both a beautiful and poetic reading experience.”
- Weekendavisen
