🔗 Share this article

During the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual too died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full facts about the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, 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 tale gradually emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories 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 demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Some readers may question how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this series, wherever it goes.