🔗 Share this article

During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff training along with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual too died in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full truth about the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of parable. “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 entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Some readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this series, no matter where it leads.