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In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full facts regarding the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character 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 proposal from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start 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.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.