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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too perished in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search 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 connection is tested by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace 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 assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: 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 suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Some readers may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this series, no matter where it goes.