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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this individual too died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth about the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 tale slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a decade 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 question his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: submit or remain a monster.” 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.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, wherever it leads.