The Wax Child 🖤🕯️

By Olga Ravn.

In 1620, on a black night in Denmark, Christenze Krukow melts beeswax and shapes it into a small human figure.

For days she carries it under her arm, the warmth of her body giving it form. She fashions its eyes and ears, though they cannot open and yet it watches and listens.

From the crook of her arm, it observes whispers in the shadows, candlelit glances, pine forests, misty fjords, and the flicker of the burning pyre.

Told from the perspective of this omniscient wax child, the book follows Christenze and her friends in the years leading up to her accusation of witchcraft and eventual execution.

The story is based on a real seventeenth-century Danish witch trial, with Olga Ravn taking creative liberties to bring this haunting period to life. These women’s independence, refusal to submit to men, and the suspicion that surrounded them build towards a powerful and inevitable end.

What I found particularly fascinating was how Ravn plays with perception. Reality, time, and truth are often obscured, leaving the reader unsure of what is fact and what is rumour.

While the accusations are firmly rooted in control and power, the book explores them through the lenses of religion, class, and sexuality – creating a complex historical context without justifying the cruelty inflicted on these women.

This is a story steeped in history, brutality, and the enduring human need to tell it.

Thank you to Kayla and the team at Viking Books for sending me a copy in time for publication day! The book is out now and available to purchase.

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