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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full truth regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport 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 piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin 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, compelling dedication to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ferry and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this series, wherever it leads.