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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too died in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character 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 tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “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 businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's series books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Some individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.