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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too perished in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted 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 elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence 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 meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, wherever it goes.