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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their conflicted histories. 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 behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form 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 entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional 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 human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or implication yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to follow this series, no matter where it goes.