Winner of the Transfuge Prize 2023 (France)

A few months after her mother’s death, Norma travels to visit her father, Torsten, who has settled in a large old summer house on an island. Torsten and her mother split up when Norma was in her mid-twenties. Now Norma is about to get divorced herself; she has left her daughter with the father in the city this week in June when she has time off from the theatre.

Already on the ferry, things seem to appear to Norma in a new way, and as she stands at the ferry port waiting for her father to pick her up, she observes something strange: the silhouette of a rider on a horse under a twisted tree up on the hill crest.

Perhaps it’s Norma herself who transforms her surroundings into mysteries. Or is there really something mysterious going on on the island? It’s certainly strange that an unknown woman visits her father in the middle of the night. In her constant struggle to understand herself and how life has turned out for her, Norma examines every incident as if it was a sign. There are clear indications that Torsten and her mother had a secret that Norma was never allowed to take part in. And now that her mother is gone, the only one who can give her an answer is Torsten – unless the solution is already there, in herself?

The Case of the Caprice of Lost Time borrows atmosphere from the classic crime novel. With great authority and in an unusually rich, infatuating prose, Rune Christiansen has written this striking story of a woman in constant search of belonging and something firm, of independence and freedom.