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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures 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 man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale indirectly, 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 businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.