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In 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 staff training along with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, 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 work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative 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 fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.