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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training along with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also perished in the fire and was unable to defend the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type 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 devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine 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 offer from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

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, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, wherever it goes.