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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness along with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type 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 businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it leads.