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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.