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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too died in the fire and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating 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 story indirectly, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK readers of the author's series books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it goes.