Awarded the 2019 Critics’ Prize

A marvellous and suggestive novel with multiple layers and multiple stories where the characters are not necessarily who they first appear to be. Tronstad’s universe, and what unfolds in it, is entirely created by the author and does not lean on predictable elements or resemble anything we know from before. The author awakens the reader, opens up new spaces, and makes it possible to expand reality, in literary terms, as well as in your head and in your heart. Its strength lies in its strangeness. The Song of Bats is a novel that grows with every reading.
From the jury’s statement, The Norwegian Critics’ Prize

Ellen’s mother runs a shelter for injured bats in the garden shed, but during the winter she goes into a deep, continuous sleep for several weeks. Ellen’s little brother is having strange seizures more and more often, and the only thing that helps is when the rare Baroque bat sits on his forehead. One day Ellen seeks help from the website, ”Biologist Answers”. Here she finds someone who will gladly help her. But help doesn’t come in the way Ellen had imagined.