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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training along with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this individual too died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete truth about the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.