🔗 Share this article

In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete truth about the event remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “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 dark force.”

A tale slowly emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, 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 childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a statement. I will persist to follow this series, no matter where it goes.