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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual too died in the fire and was unable to defend the accusations, the full facts about the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some readers may question how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a statement. I will continue to follow this series, no matter where it leads.