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In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual too perished in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport 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 part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed 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 suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes 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 storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's series books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I will continue to pursue this series, wherever it goes.