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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too died in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the event remained concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous UK audience members of the author's series novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.