🔗 Share this article

In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of parable. “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 entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. 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 all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK readers of the author's series books will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities 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 seven-book sequence, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.