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The Devil Book

'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.

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

Financial Times

About Asta Olivia Nordenhof

Asta Olivia Nordenhof is an award-winning poet and author. Money to Burn, the first book in the Scandinavian Star septology, was first published in Denmark in 2020. It was awarded the PO Enquist Prize and the European Union Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. An international sensation and translated into eighteen languages, Money to Burn was published in English by Jonathan Cape. The Devil Book is the second in the series and was an instant bestseller upon first publication in Denmark.
Details
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • ISBN: 9781787335189
  • Length: 128 pages
  • Dimensions: 206mm x 16mm x 136mm
  • Weight: 214g
  • Price: £14.99
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