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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts about the disaster remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks 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 grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two 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 multiple deaths are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.