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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training along with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the fire and was unable to refute himself, the full facts about the event stayed concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “I came to think / 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 narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling dedication to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out 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 Literature to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.