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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual also perished in the fire and was unable to refute himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist 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 psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British readers of the author's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.