The Wax Child

A hauntingly evocative short novel of witchcraft and persecution from the author of the International Booker-shortlisted The Employees, The Wax Child reimagines the true story of a seventeenth-century Danish witch trial.

Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for October 2026

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026

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.

Language: Danish (Original language of a translated text), English (Language of text)

MEDIA REVIEWS

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

Every word in The Wax Child feels spontaneous, every scene alive, as if Ravn and Aitken had lived and breathed its mysterious atmospheres in order to deliver them to us. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this haunting, gripping and singular historical novel cast a spell on us. - The International Booker Prize 2026 judges

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

An incantation that explores womanhood, motherhood and bodily autonomy. Martin Aitken’s mesmerising, exquisitely precise translation is, literally, breathtaking. To be read in one sitting, on a dark winter’s night - The Irish Times – Books of the year 2025

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

A subversive tapestry stitched together with poetry, beauty and violence - Financial Times

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