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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual also died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster remained concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it goes.