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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual also died in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives 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 everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked 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 series, the blaze on board the ferry and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

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 properly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.