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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the disaster remained concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I will persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.