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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic commitment to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it leads.