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 and gives them dark powers: they can steal people’s happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or even 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 weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.
Gripping... This devilishly subversive feminist anthem is one of a kind.
— Publishers Weekly (starred)
The Wax Child spins its own spellbinding tale of loss and longing as the true story of Christenze Kruckow weaves through language that makes what happened to her, and to so many other women like her, pulse with a clarity more real than fact. A magnificent book. A true masterpiece of both substance and style.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Addictive and unsettling.
— Claire Louise Bennett
Dark and strange and beautiful and completely gripping
— Mark Haddon
Olga Ravn is a master and an alchemist. There's nobody else doing quite what she does.
— Samantha Harvey
The story is told by a doll carved from beeswax... a fascinating and totally inhuman consciousness, one of many startling feats in this book.
— Emma Alpern, New York Magazine
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
Ravn's prose is striking, richly marbled with quotation and detail pulled from primary sources. The texture of this true language is perfect alongside Ravn's keen ear for viscera: blood sucked from a cut finger, pens scratching and leaking, teeth sliding through the narrator's wax body.
— Emily Temple, LitHub
Ravn’s narrative gathers pace with unflinching and claustrophobic swiftness.
— Kat Trigarsky, Washington Post
Ravn creates a visceral atmosphere using rich, tactile details... The Wax Child asks to be read in a single, rapturous sitting in which its dark, fast-paced and disturbing narrative pulls the reader immediately into otherworldly environs.
— Anandi Mishra, ArtReview
An intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity... The Wax Child is richly evocative, beautiful, creepy and visceral
— Aida Edemariam, The Guardian
This startling, original and beautifully written novel invites us to rethink our ideas about how history is told and what witchcraft really means.
— Belinda Bamber, Country and Town House
Olga Ravn's prose is at once concise and freewheeling, and bristles with astonishing metaphors... An outstanding novel.
— Ella Walker, The Irish Times
Ravn’s fourth novel is gorgeously mercurial: fragmented, slippery, unresolved (a quality masterfully captured by Martin Aitken’s translation).
