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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training along with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this individual also perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story 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 devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of the author's series novels will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, 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 first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Some individuals may doubt how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.