Asta Olivia Nordenhof has the literary X factor

Money to Burn alternated the story of the ship and the likelihood of an insurance scam behind the fire – “capitalism is a massacre” – with an account of a turbulent relationship between a couple named Maggie and Kurt. The telling was turbulent too, switching and jumping, with Nordenhof herself popping up in the narrative. It was an electric performance, equal parts exciting and maddening, and by the end we were on the brink of making further connections with those responsible for the ship’s fire.

How could Nordenhof follow a book as anarchic as that? The answer is the only one possible: she decided not to. The second volume, The Devil Book, opens with a foreword in free verse. Of the intended sequel, she says, “I wrote three versions / of that book / and hated / every one”, so instead has given us “an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil”. It will be, she adds – with the sparky sharpness familiar to readers of the first book – “your job / to make it fit / into the series / I mean really / I can’t / do the whole thing / by myself”.

The intensity that ran through Money to Burn begins more slowly here, given that the opening describes the least romantic possible beginning to a relationship: a chance encounter on a replacement bus service. The narrator, who’s presented as Nordenhof herself, meets a man – “I lied, as usual, about who I am” – and agrees to stay in his flat in London while she writes her next book.

This sets up a dual time scheme, where the narrator recounts her days with her London host – an apparent gent who each day leaves her a note with a heart, and a croissant, before leaving her alone – and her past relationship with a man she calls T. “It’s been more than 10 years since I left T with a suitcase full of cash in my possession,” she opens, irresistibly. What she wants to learn from writing the story is not whether “T is a devil [but rather] if T is a devil, what does that make me?”

Her life with T is really the heart of the book. The narrator became a sex worker after her benefits were cut (“Suicide or prostitution, I thought on the way home”) and T was a client who one day asked her – told her – to become his companion on a forthcoming trip. She would be well paid. As with her London host, she said yes. “What was going through my mind? Hard to explain. Think of a storm inside a large and empty hall.”

The Devil Book is loaded with that sort of heightened imagery – “my ruined heart”, “my fabulous will to destroy” – that would seem over the top if the emotions didn’t run just as high. The two relationships in the book, with T and with the narrator’s London host, escalate differently, sometimes dangerously. As with Money to Burn, every page of this short book – anything longer would be overwhelming – sizzles with energy, beautifully conveyed in Caroline Waight’s translation. The themes of the previous volume are reiterated: capitalism, women’s submission, patriarchy (“fuck men!”).

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, where the fictional structure is stripped back to the narrator’s thoughts from a mental hospital, fumes with fury.

Late in the book, Nordenhof writes of capitalist society: “there is nothing made / we can’t / unmake / if we want to / and there are enough of us”. It might be her manifesto for the novel too.

The Devil Book by Asta Olivia Nordenhof, translated by Caroline Waight, is published by Jonathan Cape (£14.99). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £13.49. Delivery charges may apply

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Photography by Alamy