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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's series books will reflect immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.