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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “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 devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who claimed 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 begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, 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 project purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I will persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.