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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the complete truth regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling commitment to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Many British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound 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 one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this series, wherever it goes.