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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full facts about the disaster stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens 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 trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.