The Devil Book

'Nordenhof has a sort of literary X factor' OBSERVER‘A comet in Scandinavian literature’ OLGA RAVN 
 
A classic girl-meets-boy-meets-devil story from a Danish literary superstar 
 
*Guardian best translated fiction of 2025* 
 
A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and agrees to visit him in London. She has lived many lives and as she sits out a two-week quarantine in his apartment, she begins to tell her story. 
 
Years ago, desperate for money, she sold herself to a man called T. He offered her a suitcase full of money and lavish gifts in exchange for total control of her body. In the bed between them lay a large kitchen knife and the promise of an iconic death. 
 
At the last moment, she chose life and fled. Now in London, the woman watches the people around her, searching for clues on how to live in the face of betrayal and loss, and what freedom really looks like. 
 
Intimate, revelatory and ultimately revolutionary, this is a portrait of a woman driven to the brink of destruction, who learns to believe in love again. 
 
'Like a normal novel with the boring bits taken out' Guardian 
 
'Defiantly unique' Financial Times

Covering much of the same ground as her last novel — the interrelation between money, sex, violence and gender, capital’s power to console or benumb — The Devil Book shares the same bristling, didactic prose, but with a welcome barbed humour... a lacerating literary harnessing of rage at a decrepit system, held together by Nordenhof’s defiantly unique voice

So beguiling… the book as a whole is...an undeniable success: funny and angry, tender and timely

Nordenhof has a sort of literary X factor, cutting her story down to only the most interesting parts. As Scandinavian septologies go, it’s more fun than Jon Fosse’s, more ballsy than Solvej Balle’s. The final section…fumes with fury

[Readers] will fall in love with Nordenhof’s project purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable… There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, wherever it goes

Nordenhof’s [book] is hot and eccentric… Like a normal novel with all the boring bits taken out, these books are more energising and thrilling the more furious they get

So tender and pure that it is very difficult not to be moved

'Nordenhof's writing is electrifying' CHETNA MAROO‘A comet in Scandinavian literature’ OLGA RAVN 
 
A bold, lyrical and surprising novel about violence and money, love and desire, and a stand-off with the Devil himself 
 
A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and agrees to visit him in London. While she sits out a two-week Covid quarantine in his apartment, she begins to tell her story. Years ago and desperate for money, she sold herself to a stranger called T. He offered her a suitcase full of money and lavish gifts in exchange for total control of her body. In the bed between them lay a large kitchen knife and the promise of an iconic death. 
 
But at the last moment, she aborted the treacherous game and fled. Now in London, she reflects on the forces - financial and social - that led her to the brink of destruction, and wonders what it would take to believe in love again. 
 
Frank, intimate and dazzling entertaining, The Devil Book is a classic girl-meets-boy-meets-devil story. This unmissable stand-alone novel is the follow up to the critically-acclaimed Money to Burn.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof

Caroline Waight

Into the narrow field of Scandinavian multi-decker novels – populated by Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård – strides a new star... Buzzes with electricity… It’s intriguing, it’s maddening, it’s exciting. I’m in

Taut and intelligent prose… there's no doubt about Money to Burn: somehow, Nordenhof has managed to write a moving love story and an incendiary indictment of contemporary society

Nordenhof's writing crackles with indignation, conviction, ferocious wit, and savvy human insight. Startling, irresistible, and thoroughly enlivening, reading her words is not unlike looking at the entrancing flames of a tremendous fire

Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Checkout 19

A comet in Scandinavian literature. Her sentences are like lightning, they hold great beauty and destruction. Funny, furious and masterful – Money to Burn is a declaration of war against capitalism

Money to Burn is ambitious in its structure and narrative, but Nordenhof carries it off with ease. Unusual, fascinating, and complicated in the best way

Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

What blew me away was how — with its shard-like chapters — Money to Burn renders not only the inner lives of the married couple at the centre of the story with truth and depth, but something of the texture of their individual existence, their ways of being in the world, together and apart. Nordenhof’s writing is electrifying.

Money to Burn is direct and full of fervour. I loved how fast it makes it moves and how much grandeur it achieves. I need the next instalment desperately

Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future

It contains both the scale of a grand epic with the careful and clarified language of a Claire Keegan novel. So rich in its storytelling, sense of place and characterisation that even in its darkest moments it's impossible to look away [...] Entirely intoxicating and compulsive, this is a story in the hands of an utterly remarkable writer, and has me very much desperate to read more. Perfect

Unbelievably good. I can’t think of anyone apart from Kristen Thorup, who in the last decades has written so compassionately and vividly and at the same time so unsentimental about people on the fringes of the wealthy lives of the welfare state

Money to Burn signals the start of a new masterpiece of Nordic literature

Nordenhof’s first novel isn’t like others. That’s one of the reasons why Money to Burn sets the bar so unbelievably high for the coming volumes of what can already be dubbed the most ambitious literary project of the 2020s

How do you write a social-realistic, political novel about capitalism in the 21st century? This is how you do it!

Energising and thrilling... Like a normal novel with all the boring bits taken out

A groundbreaking, profound and intimate novel about capitalism’s effects on the human heart: Money to Burn is the first volume of the Scandinavian Star series, a new masterpiece of Danish literature 
 
'Buzzes with electricity… intriguing, maddening, exciting. I’m in’ Observer 
 
'Taut and intelligent… a moving love story and an incendiary indictment of contemporary society' Literary Review 
 
Maggie and Kurt are struggling to hold their marriage together after their only daughter has left home. They live in an old farmhouse in Nyborg but somehow keep missing each other, unable to discuss the events that brought them together. 
 
Decades ago, a passenger ferry called the Scandinavian Star caught fire, killing 159 people. The event is still considered a national tragedy in Denmark and Norway. Years later, it was revealed not to be an accident, but the result of an insurance scam gone wrong. 
 
How is the Scandinavian Star disaster connected to Maggie and Kurt? How does money affect and infect our closest relationships? And is it ever possible to escape? 
 
‘A comet in Scandinavian literature’ OLGA RAVN 
 
‘Startling and irresistible’ CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT 
 
'Unusual, fascinating, and complicated in the best way' CLAIRE FULLER 
 
'Nordenhof's writing is electrifying' CHETNA MAROO

Asta Olivia Nordenhof

Praise for Money to Burn

Into the narrow field of Scandinavian multi-decker novels – populated by Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård – strides a new star... Buzzes with electricity… It’s intriguing, it’s maddening, it’s exciting. I’m i ...

Taut and intelligent prose… there's no doubt about Money to Burn: somehow, Nordenhof has managed to write a moving love story and an incendiary indictment of contemporary society

Nordenhof's writing crackles with indignation, conviction, ferocious wit, and savvy human insight. Startling, irresistible, and thoroughly enlivening, reading her words is not unlike looking at the entrancing fla ...

Into the narrow field of Scandinavian multi-decker novels – populated by Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård – strides a new star... Buzzes with electricity… It’s intriguing, it’s maddening, it’s exciting. I’m i ...

Taut and intelligent prose… there's no doubt about Money to Burn: somehow, Nordenhof has managed to write a moving love story and an incendiary indictment of contemporary society

Nordenhof's writing crackles with indignation, conviction, ferocious wit, and savvy human insight. Startling, irresistible, and thoroughly enlivening, reading her words is not unlike looking at the entrancing fla ...

Into the narrow field of Scandinavian multi-decker novels – populated by Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgård – strides a new star... Buzzes with electricity… It’s intriguing, it’s maddening, it’s exciting. I’m i ...

Taut and intelligent prose… there's no doubt about Money to Burn: somehow, Nordenhof has managed to write a moving love story and an incendiary indictment of contemporary society

Nordenhof's writing crackles with indignation, conviction, ferocious wit, and savvy human insight. Startling, irresistible, and thoroughly enlivening, reading her words is not unlike looking at the entrancing fla ...

Books by Asta Olivia Nordenhof

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