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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too died in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the full facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose moral and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.