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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual also died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the complete truth regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / 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 obliquely, as a form of allegory. “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 emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, 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 doubt his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

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 ethical and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.