The Wax Child

A Waterstones paperback of the year 2026

"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." — Sunday Times, Best books of 2025

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.

Soon, it will begin 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