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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness along with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, as a form 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 devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two results: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some readers may question how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.