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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual also died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full truth regarding the disaster remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt'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 begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a decade earlier, 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 doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British readers of the author's series books will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.