About

Mr B's says: 'We are thrilled to welcome Olga Ravn, one of Denmark's most celebrated authors, to Bath to talk to us about her new novel, The Wax Child, translated by Martin Aitken.

Olga won us over back in 2020 with her novel, The Employees, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a beloved Team B favourite. Olga returns with The Wax Child, a mesmerising, frightening vision – based on an infamous 17th century Danish witch trial – of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater. '

Mr B's Bookseller Sôffi has already devoured an early copy, and says: 'Ravn gives voice to the accused, namely the infamous Christenze Krukow, via the mouthpiece of an all-knowing wax doll born from Krukow's hands. The Wax Child is both rich and poetic, Ravn's signature style sings in this setting – weird, witchy fiction fans, rejoice!'

Olga Ravn's 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.

Can't make it to the event? Order a signed dedicated copy of The Wax Child here.

About the book:

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…

'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

'Dark and strange and beautiful and completely gripping' Mark Haddon

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