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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete facts about the event stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK readers of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this series, wherever it leads.