The Devil Book Analysis: A Danish Series Burning with Purpose
During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the event stayed concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.
Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse
In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” 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 landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual 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 supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a form of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”
A tale slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.
Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism
Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration
Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.
Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality
Numerous British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Some readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.
Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined
There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly 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, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.
