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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training along with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full facts regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, 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 question his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling commitment to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many British readers of the author's series books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it leads.