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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / 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 dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or remain 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 forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of the author's series novels will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how far it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.