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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full truth regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / 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 narrative gradually emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.