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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to refute himself, the complete facts about the event remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form 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 tale gradually emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it leads.