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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is possible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.