Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan passed away on Wednesday. The immediate family confirms for the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidene that he has been found dead in his apartment. The police suspect no crime at this time.

Poet publisher Simon Pasternak expresses his sadness in a press release:

“Yahya Hassan turned 24 years old. Twenty-four years. It's nothing, it's a disaster. I have known him since he was 16 years old, this brilliant boy with the enormous talent, the nerves outside his clothes, but with the great talent of sleep-like security ”.

Simon Pasternak describes a poet who insisted on having his own voice and who did not bow to anyone.

“He wanted to be himself and write the poems he wanted - at the enormous cost it had. Now he is dead. Unable to wear ”.

Best-selling poetry debut in Denmark

Yahya Hassan was born in 1995 and grew up in Aarhus. His criminal career began early and he was placed in a youth home, which is where a teacher discovered his talent for writing.

He debuted in 2013 as an 18-year-old with the poetry collection Yahya Hassan, which received a huge impact and was praised by the critics. The poetry collection became the best-selling poetry debut ever in Denmark, catapulting the young poet to instant star status.

The autobiographical was the fuel of Hassan's poems, which often revolved around his upbringing, the immigrant community, violence, abuse, imprisonment, drugs and mental illness.

Yahya Hassan was controversial both in his private life and in public. He stated hypocrisy and double standards in the Muslim underclass in the media, which led to a fierce and infected debate in his home country of Denmark.

Wrote a collection of poems in the forensic psychiatric ward

Years after his debut, he developed an addiction problem and began to share his wild life on social media by posing with guns and drugs.

In 2016, he was sentenced to prison for shooting a man, and two years later he pleaded guilty to 42 crimes and sentenced to forensic psychiatric care.

He wrote the new autobiographical collection of poems, Yahya Hassan 2, at the forensic psychiatric institution and it is about his turbulent life after the success of his debut. This collection of poems has also been praised by the critics, and was nominated in the spring for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

"Never read anything so autobiographical before"

Håkan Bravinger, literary director at Norstedt's publisher, says that he was skeptical at first to publish Hassan's poetry.

- I thought it might be a scandal book that might have been interesting in its Danish context. But then I read it. It was good poetry and I noticed how I was drawn into it. I had never read anything that was so autobiographical, extravagant and also violent in a way. His unique poetic voice made the text not aggressive but something beautiful, he says.