The Devil Book Analysis: A Danish Literary Sequence Burning with Intent
During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.
Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse
Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part 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 presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a man known as T.
The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style
The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type 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 sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”
A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.
Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a political act
Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration
Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed 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 set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.
Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality
Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire aboard the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose final form, at present, is unknowable.
Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused
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 moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.
