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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the complete truth about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents 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 source of the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, 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 motives. As the threads of the dual narratives 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 everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic commitment to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected 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 brief flashes of information or implication yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it leads.