🔗 Share this article

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too perished in the fire and was not able to refute himself, the full facts about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—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 dedication to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.