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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was not able to refute himself, the full facts about the event stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: submit or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.