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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” 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 effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, 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 sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade before, 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 motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect 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.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse 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 scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Some individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to pursue this series, wherever it goes.