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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. 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 loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect also perished in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / 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 gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, 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 young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British readers of the author's series novels will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will persist to follow this series, no matter where it goes.