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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too died in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the complete facts about the event remained concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a form 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it leads.