Literary Sensation: The Rise of a Danish Immigrant Poet

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/danish-immigrant-teen-emerges-as-literary-sensation-a-958515.html



Since his rise to fame, Islamists have threatened to kill 18-year-old Danish poet Yahya Hassan. They are angered by the portrayals in his writing of his immigrant family background, which he describes as backwards, hypocritical and blinded by religion.

Literary Sensation: The Rise of a Danish Immigrant Poet
By Tobias Rapp
March 14, 2014 – 05:43 PM

Yahya Hassan has only written one volume of poetry. It's modern, free verse stuff that doesn't rhyme, the kind of thing that usually no one reads. Yet these days when Yahya Hassan enters a room, even one at the publishing house that printed his poetry, first he has to wait for his two bodyguards to check the place out: Okay, no attackers here, you can go in.

Hassan is 18 years old. His self-titled book "Yahya Hassan" sold over 100,000 copies in Denmark within the space of just a few months. It also earned him over 30 serious death threats. Hassan, whose book is also being released in German translation and who is expected to make an appearance at the Leipzig Book Fair this week, lives in Copenhagen and is a Danish citizen, even if his name doesn't sound like a typical Danish one. He's not a big fan of the Danish government, though.

But that's not the reason for the death threats.

This teenaged poet has broken the law of silence within his family and expressed criticism of his father, who beat him and the rest of his family. Hassan's poetry describes how he sees his background -- backwards, hypocritical and blinded by religion. In short, he's saying exactly the things that xenophobic critics of Islam often do. That, at least, is the accusation against him.