Translated by Kari Dickson

On an ordinary day in Bergen, Norway, in the late 1990s, Anna is reading in the garden while her two-year-old daughter, Laura, plays on her tricycle. Then, in one startling moment, Anna misreads a word, an alternate universe opens up, and Laura disappears. Twenty years or so later, life has gone on as if nothing happened. In each of the womens lives, however, something is not quite right.

Both Anna and Laura continue to exist, but they are invisible to each other and forgotten in each others worlds. Both are writers and amateur pianists. Both are married; Anna had two more children after Laura disappeared, and Laura is expecting a child of her own. They worry about their families, their jobs, the climateand whether this reality is all there is.

In the exquisite, wistful, slyly profound Present Tense Machine, Gunnhild yehaug delivers another dazzling renovation of what fiction can do, a testament to the fact that language shapes the world.

Paperback | 176 pages | 4.70″ x 7.25″