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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates led to the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this individual also died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

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 sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates 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 wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over all that transpires. Some readers may doubt how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this series, wherever it leads.