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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training combined with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences 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 unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth 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 tackles the story indirectly, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / 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 dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at least partly 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 on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

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 literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.