A event on Monday 3rd November. The event starts at 18:30.
*please note this event is now sold out*
Monday 3rd November 2025, 6:30 pm
Storysmith, 236 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1JD
Doors: 6.15pm, Talk starts: 6.30pm
Having been obsessed with her oeuvre since The Employees was first translated into English back in 2020, we are now in a state of agog amazement that we can confirm Olga Ravn will be coming to Bristol to discuss her new novel, The Wax Child.
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that we’ve already devoured the book like the little proof-goblins we are, and it’s a haunting, delicious, rank and philosophically astute dissection of one of the most notorious witch trials in Dutch history. All that makes us even more excited to say that Olga will be in conversation with none other than A.K. Blakemore, one of the most skilled novelists working today and – co-inky-dink? – author of The Manningtree Witches, which just so happens to be an equally arresting dissection of one of the most notorious witch trials in English history. We’re sure you’ll agree that this is going to be a hugely special conversation!
Tickets include a glass of wine. Pre-order your copy of The Wax Child (rrp £14.99 ) for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night!
ABOUT OLGA RAVN
Olga Ravn is one of Denmark’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Her 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.
Picture credit: Sara Galbiati
ABOUT THE WAX CHILD
‘Olga Ravn is a master and an alchemist. There’s nobody else doing quite what she does’ Samantha Harvey
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…Based on an infamous seventeenth century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is the extraordinary new novel from Olga Ravn, one of the most acclaimed and original writers at work today: a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.
‘Dark and strange and beautiful and completely gripping’ Mark Haddon
‘The Wax Child has emerged from an imagination that is wild, visionary, and absolutely original. It is beautiful, eerie, sublime, and, like a fingerprint or a snowflake, only one of its kind. Olga Ravn is a roof-raisingly brilliant writer.’ Neel Mukherjee
ABOUT A.K. BLAKEMORE
A. K. Blakemore is a poet and novelist from London. Her first novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Costa and RSL Ondaatje Prizes. Her second novel, The Glutton, was published by Granta Books in 2023.
For venue access info, visit storysmithbooks.com/access or email [email protected]
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Monday 3rd November 2025, 6:30 pm
Storysmith, 236 North Street, Bristol, BS3 1JD
Doors: 6.15pm, Talk starts: 6.30pm
Having been obsessed with her oeuvre since The Employees was first translated into English back in 2020, we are now in a state of agog amazement that we can confirm Olga Ravn will be coming to Bristol to discuss her new novel, The Wax Child.
You’ll be unsurprised to learn that we’ve already devoured the book like the little proof-goblins we are, and it’s a haunting, delicious, rank and philosophically astute dissection of one of the most notorious witch trials in Dutch history. All that makes us even more excited to say that Olga will be in conversation with none other than A.K. Blakemore, one of the most skilled novelists working today and – co-inky-dink? – author of The Manningtree Witches, which just so happens to be an equally arresting dissection of one of the most notorious witch trials in English history. We’re sure you’ll agree that this is going to be a hugely special conversation!
Tickets include a glass of wine. Pre-order your copy of The Wax Child (rrp £14.99 ) for a special discounted price with your ticket, then collect on the night!
ABOUT OLGA RAVN
Olga Ravn is one of Denmark’s most celebrated contemporary authors. Her 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.
Picture credit: Sara Galbiati
ABOUT THE WAX CHILD
‘Olga Ravn is a master and an alchemist. There’s nobody else doing quite what she does’ Samantha Harvey
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…Based on an infamous seventeenth century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is the extraordinary new novel from Olga Ravn, one of the most acclaimed and original writers at work today: a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.
‘Dark and strange and beautiful and completely gripping’ Mark Haddon
‘The Wax Child has emerged from an imagination that is wild, visionary, and absolutely original. It is beautiful, eerie, sublime, and, like a fingerprint or a snowflake, only one of its kind. Olga Ravn is a roof-raisingly brilliant writer.’ Neel Mukherjee
ABOUT A.K. BLAKEMORE
A. K. Blakemore is a poet and novelist from London. Her first novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Costa and RSL Ondaatje Prizes. Her second novel, The Glutton, was published by Granta Books in 2023.
For venue access info, visit storysmithbooks.com/access or email [email protected]
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
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