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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a form of parable. “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 devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.