Danish author Olga Ravn returns with her fourth novel, The Wax Child, a deeply atmospheric exploration of witchcraft and female solidarity in 17th century Denmark that follows her critically acclaimed International Booker-shortlisted work The Employees.
A Harrowing Historical Backdrop
The novel opens with a stark historical reality: on 26 June 1621, a woman was beheaded in Copenhagen. During the intense persecution years between 1617 and 1625, Denmark witnessed a witch burning approximately every five days. Ravn vividly depicts one such execution where a condemned woman is "tied to the ladder, and the ladder pushed into the bonfire," her daughter witnessing the horrific moment when her mother's eye "explodes" from the intense heat.
This brutal scene is observed by an unusual witness - a wax doll that perceives everything across time and space. This supernatural narrator describes being "in the king's ear, and I was in the king's mouth, and I was in the king's loose tooth and in the quicksilver of his liver, and did hear."
The Magic of Female Solidarity
Ravn bases her narrative on Christenze Krukow, a real Danish noblewoman who faced witchcraft accusations three times during her life, including charges of creating wax children. The author seamlessly integrates authentic spells from historical "black books" and grimoires into her narrative, revealing how 17th century magic was as integral to daily life as Christianity, though more clandestine.
What emerges most powerfully is the depiction of everyday feminine magic - women working together gutting fish, carding wool, and protecting each other from domestic violence. When Elisabeth suffers beatings from her husband, her community of women attempts intervention. The novel celebrates the magic of friendship, laughter, dancing, love and shared wine, with one character urging: "Will you come with us to the Lucia fest, Elisabeth? Magic is possible. Laughter is possible. There is a way out, Elisabeth, there is a way out..."
Ravn's Distinct Literary Vision
Though Ravn's three English-translated novels appear superficially different - from the 22nd-century spaceship setting of The Employees to the contemporary motherhood autofiction of My Work - they share common ground as novels of ideas grounded in physical experience. Her poetic background shines through in prose that asserts knowledge resides in objects and sensory experience.
The wax child narrator asks "How do I know this?" then answers: "It is like a gash in me to know it." Ravn achieves a remarkable synaesthesia in her descriptions, with the wax child declaring "I see the king with the smell of the eye" and hearing "time as a clearing among trees."
At its most powerful, The Wax Child proves richly evocative, beautiful, creepy and visceral, capturing the dark Danish December where "from the curvature of the earth, minutes run like droplets from the day." While occasionally elliptical, the novel's poetic complexity serves its subject matter - demanding neat sense from witchcraft narratives, Ravn suggests, aligns one too closely with the witch-hunters themselves.
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken, is published by Viking (£14.99) and available through guardianbookshop.com.
