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During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training combined with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full facts about the disaster remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” 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 setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, 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 intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK readers of the author's series novels will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

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 project purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.