Book of the Week: THE WAX CHILD by Olga Ravn (translated from Danish by Martin Aitken)
“Set during the witch trials of 17th-century Denmark, this unforgettable novel by Olga Ravn is compulsively readable yet anything but biddable — shadowy lives are revealed in shadowy prose, largely from the perspective of an object, a wax doll belonging to a group of women who exploit magic as a means of survival. Martin Aitken has leant his pitch-perfect ear to the period language and poetry of the Danish original. 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.” —judges’ citation on listing the book for the 2026 International Booker Prize