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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the event remained concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale 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 entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure 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 a pair of results: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may question how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.