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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual too perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the full facts about the event stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous investment made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a form of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet casting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will continue to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.