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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual also died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. 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 multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of the author's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Certain 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 final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.