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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training combined with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the fire and was not able to refute himself, the full facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a form 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 entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening influence 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 narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it leads.