🔗 Share this article

During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too died in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story indirectly, 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 sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. 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 multiple, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.