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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full facts about the event remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / 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.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form of parable. “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 businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's series books will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Some individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.