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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the event stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, 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 sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous British audience members of the author's series novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet casting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to follow this series, wherever it leads.