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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the full facts about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe 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: an ardent, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to read this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.