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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was probably started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the two stories 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 legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will continue to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.