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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too perished in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, 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 dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to suspect 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: an ardent, compelling dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[This entity] 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 series of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will persist to follow this series, no matter where it goes.