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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual also died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form of allegory. “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 slowly unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer 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 threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet projecting a growing influence over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.