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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire 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 blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth about the disaster stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, 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 sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] understands 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 ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it goes.