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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the complete truth about the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, 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 demonic forces everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I will persist to pursue this series, wherever it goes.