The Wax Child

A chilling story about female power and brutality, nature and magic, and a dizzying insight into a 17th-century worldview

It was a black night in the year 1620 when Christenze Krukow made the wax child, melting down beeswax and setting 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 eyes and ears for it that cannot open, and yet it watches and listens.

The wax child 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.

Based on an infamous 17th-century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater. It was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.