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In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also perished in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “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.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.