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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of the author's series novels will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.