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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the fire and was not able to defend the accusations, the full facts about the disaster remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / 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 form of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling dedication to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's series books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive business deals that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.