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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual too died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.