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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts about the event stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood 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 task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin 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 dedication to literature as a political act

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 what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's series books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to continue to follow this series, wherever it goes.