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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also died in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended poetic passage in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything 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 female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, 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 the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it leads.