Olga Ravn Archives - A Life in Books

Books of the Year 2025: Part Four

We’re racing towards the end of the year although I spent several weeks of 2025’s last quarter going nowhere very much thanks to plantar fasciitis. Several absorbing novels kept me going, beginning with one which grew out of a social media post during the pandemic. Damian Barr’s The Two Roberts is about Robert MacBryde and […]

Cover image for The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (transl. Martin Aitken): ‘I am not a child, only something that looks like one’

5 November 2025 / 15 Comments

Set in seventeenth-century Denmark, Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child grew out of HEX, her play which premiered at the Royal Danish Theatre in 2023. It’s narrated by the titular wax child moulded by Christenze Kruckow, an impoverished noblewoman charged with witchcraft. Is that what harmful magic is? The thing everyone did to stop the hiccups?

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn (transl. Martin Aitken): ‘I am not a child, only something that looks like one’ Read More »