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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual too perished in the incident and was unable to defend the accusations, the full truth about the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened 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 / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of the author's series books will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.