The Wax Child

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

Olga Ravn (Author)

Olga Ravn is one of Denmark’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Her novel The Employees was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, and longlisted for the National Book Awards and the Dublin Literary Award. Her novel My Work won the Politikens Literature Prize in 2021 and led to changes in the country’s maternity rights. She has also written shorter pieces for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta.

Martin Aitken (Translator)

Martin Aitken’s translations of Scandinavian fiction are widely published. His work has appeared on the shortlists of the International Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, and the US National Book Awards, among other prizes. He received the PEN America Translation Prize in 2019 and, for the first book in the Morning Star cycle, the US National Translation Award in Prose in 2022. He lives in Denmark.

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