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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the full facts regarding the event stayed concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes 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. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches 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 entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's series books will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Some readers may question how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.