The Devil Book Review: A Danish Literary Sequence Burning with Purpose

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training combined with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous UK readers of the author's series novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a larger whole whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics 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 experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.