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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual too perished in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full truth regarding the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting 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 suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “I came to think / 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 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 occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads 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 nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose moral and creative intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.