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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was unable to refute himself, the complete facts regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the fire was probably started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section 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 man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a form 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 entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she accepted an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of the author's series books will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, wherever it leads.