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In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the event stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” 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 unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her challenge to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British readers of Nordenhof's series books will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.