Olga Ravn

"Is this a human problem? If so, I'd like to keep it. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Shopping and child-rearing. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before-- and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Olga Ravin's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity."--

A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century

The Employees

From the acclaimed author of The Employees, a radical, funny, and mercilessly honest novel about motherhood.

My Work

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare

'The Wax Child proves Olga Ravn’s ahead of the game. She's the strangest - and best - young novelist in Europe' Telegraph ‘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. ‘I gulped The Wax Child down and dreamed wild dreams about it. Just brilliant.’ Max Porter 'Addictive and unsettling' Claire-Louise Bennett 'An instant classic' Jeff VanderMeer

From the International Booker Prize shortlisted author

The Wax Child

EN ARBEJDSPLADSROMAN FRA DET 22. ÅRHUNDREDE Besætningen på Det sekstusinde skib består af menneskelige og menneskelignende ansatte. Da skibet får en række genstande ombord fra planeten Nyopdagelsen, begynder de ansatte at udvikle dybe forbindelser til genstandene, men uden helt at kunne forstå hvorfor. Snart ser besætningen sig selv i et nyt lys, og enhver ansat må spørge sig selv om arbejdsgangen kan fortsætte som før. Opbygget som en protokol med vidneudsagn forsøger den litterære science-fiction roman De ansatte at undersøge, hvad forskellen er på et menneske og en ting, og hvad det vil sige at være i live.

De ansatte

Shortlisted for the International Booker prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.

The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century

From the internationally celebrated author of The Employees and My Work comes an extraordinary, haunting tale of witchcraft and persecution. In seventeenth-century Denmark, unmarried noblewoman Christenze Kruckow and several other women are accused of witchcraft. They are rumoured to be possessed by the Devil, who comes to them in the form of a tall, headless man and gives them dark powers. It is said they perform unchristian acts and can steal people's happiness, cause pestilence, illness, or even death. And once the rumour of witchcraft takes hold, they are all in danger of the stake. Narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze one dark night in 1620, The Wax Child is an unsettling, dizzying horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of pre-modern Europe. ﻿Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of infamous witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland. Full of lush, vivid storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn weaves in quotes from original sources, such as letters, court documents, magic spells, and Scandinavian grimoires.

Efter at have født et barn taber forfatteren Anna sin plads i verden. Stadig chokeret efter fødslen flytter hun med sin svenske kæreste, Aksel, og deres lille søn til et sneomsust Stockholm. Snart må parret se sig selv falde ind i gamle kønsroller mod deres vilje, og en afgrund åbner sig imellem dem. Angst truer med at opsluge Anna, der læser alt for mange nyheder på nettet og shopper alt for meget tøj, hun ikke har råd til. For at stå imod en truende galskab må hun læse og skrive sig til rette i verden igen. Mit arbejde er en roman om den enestående og grundlæggende erfaring at sætte børn i verden. Den blander prosa, digt, journal, brev og meget mere for at udforske forholdet mellem moderskab og skrift. En bog om fødselsdepression, husholdning og shopping. Og om hvordan man kan lære at elske det ængstelige, åbne liv med et barn.

Mit arbejde

En lærer på en kostskole er besat af historien om spøgelset Celestine. Med sig har hun sin nedtrykte kæreste Kim, bag sig en opvækst i en række sammenbragte familier. Som barn var hun skilsmissens sted, men nu lægger hun ansigt til et spøgelse. Kærligheden er blevet et arbejde. Hun går rundt på skolen om natten i en hvid kjole. Celestine er Olga Ravns første roman.

Celestine

Den hvide rose

Personel

الموظفون

Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids. Olga Ravn's prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity. It was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.

Los Empleados

Mitt arbete

Den vita rosen

Dans un futur indistinct, à des millions de kilomètres de la Terre, des employés travaillent sur le six millième vaisseau d’une puissante compagnie aux allures totalitaires. Il y a les humains et il y a les ressemblants. Ceux qui ont été enfantés et ceux qui ont été créés. Ceux qui vont mourir et ceux qui ne mourront pas. Sur une période de dix-huit mois, une commission compile une série de témoignages au sujet des relations et de la production à bord du vaisseau où l’activité consiste souvent à surveiller d’étranges objets bourdonnants, qui améliorent l’humeur, fécondent les rêves et hallucinent les consciences. Aussi glaçante qu’émouvante, cette science-fiction révèle le désarroi d’humains contraints de vivre loin de chez eux et les interrogations des ressemblants quant à leurs capacités émotives. Je sais que vous dites que je ne suis pas dans une prison ici, mais les objets m’ont dit le contraire.

Les employés

”Där det finns många kvinnor finns det många häxor.” Den ogifta adelskvinnan Christenze Kruckow anklagas för trolldom och måste fly från Fyn till Jylland. Här blir hon del av en gemenskap kring den nästan gudomliga Maren Kneppis. Snart hinner dock ryktet om trolldom i kapp och hon inser att inte bara hon, utan även de andra förtrogna, är i fara och kan hamna på bålet. Den centrala anklagelsen är att Christenze Kruckow av vax tillverkat ett magiskt barn. Det är denna docka som här tar till orda och berättar historien om kvinnornas öde. Olga Ravn har hämtat personer, platser och händelser ur 1600-talets historia och sedan skapat en egen berättelse om de som dömdes till döden för handlingar som ansågs vara häxkonster. Vaxbarnet är Olgas fjärde roman och hon förnyar sitt tema om kvinnors styrka och livsbetingelser. Vaxbarnet talar starkt och tydligt till oss i vår samtid där ultrahögerpartier och olika religiösa samfund överallt i världen reser krav om en mer traditionell syn på kön. Som vanligt hamnar kvinnans kropp och värde i fokus för sådana strömningar. Olga Ravn skriver med stor självsäkerhet fram hur patriarkatet räds, kväser och till slut dödar kvinnor.

Vaxbarnet

Tove Ditlevsen

Jennifer Russell

Sophia Hersi Smith

It was a meaningless day / like what you call / love // It was a Thursday / In parentheses. The brackets around it / Have already faded / Life tastes of ash / And is bearable. //

From one of Denmark’s most celebrated twentieth-century writers, the author of the acclaimed Copenhagen Trilogy, comes There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a major volume of selected poetry written throughout Tove Ditlevsen’s life. Infused with the same wry nihilism, quiet intensity, dark humor, and crystalline genius that readers savor in her prose, these are heartbreak poems, childhood poems, self-portraits, death poems, wounded poems, confessional poems, and love poems―poems that stare into the surfaces that seduce and deceive us. They describe childhood, longing, loss, and memory, obsessively tracing their imprints and intrusions upon everyday life. With morbid curiosity, Ditlevsen’s poems turn toward the uncanny and the abject, approaching gingerly. They stitch the gray scale of daily disappointment with vivid, unsparing detail, a degree of precision that renders loneliness psychedelic.

Speaking across generations to both the passions of youth and the agonies of adulthood, There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die reveals everyday life stripped of its excesses, exposing its bones and bare qualities: the normal and the strange, the meaningful and the meaningless. These startling, resonant poems are both canonical and contemporary, and demand to be shared with friends, loved ones, nemeses, and strangers alike.

Olga Ravn

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