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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British readers of the author's series novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, no matter where it goes.