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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too perished in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full facts about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older 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 repeat the journey in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in 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 lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling commitment to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.