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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the full facts regarding the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.