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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this individual too perished in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles 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 sensational story / 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 weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two results: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply 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 pursue this literary journey, no matter where it leads.