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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “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 blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of the author's series books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing shadow over all that transpires. Certain individuals may question how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.