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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth about the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write 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 / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story 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 sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person 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 figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British audience members of the author's series books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ferry and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.