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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full facts regarding the event stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures 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 account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.