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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story indirectly, 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 businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic dedication to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: submit or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain 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 background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.