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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth about the event remained concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how far it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.