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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the fire and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to believe 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: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over everything 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 intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose moral and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.