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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect too died in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth about the disaster remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a poor financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.