Sara Omar: Kurdish-Danish Novelist Who Broke the Silence
- Dala Sarkis
- May 6
- 8 min read
Updated: May 9
Who Is Sara Omar?
Sara Omar (Kurdish: سارا عومهر) is a Kurdish-Danish author, poet, and human rights activist born on 21 August 1986 in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan. She is the first internationally recognised female novelist from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and her debut novel Dødevaskeren ("The Dead Washer", 2017) became a literary phenomenon in Denmark — selling over 100,000 copies and being hailed by Danish media as "the MeToo of Muslim women."
She writes in Danish about honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and the patriarchal abuse of women in conservative Kurdish-Muslim communities. Her work has earned her some of Denmark's most prestigious literary and human rights prizes — and serious death threats that have placed her under police protection in Copenhagen.
Key Takeaways
Born 21 August 1986 in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan; Danish citizen since 2001.
Debut novel Dødevaskeren (2017) sold over 100,000 copies in Denmark and won the Readers' Book Prize 2018.
Sequel Skyggedanseren (2019) won De Gyldne Laurbær — one of Denmark's most prestigious literary prizes — in 2020.
Writes in Danish about honour-based violence, FGM, forced marriage, and the patriarchal abuse of women.
Lives under police protection; ambassador for DIGNITY, the Danish Women's Society, Crossing Borders, and GAPF.
Quick Facts
Full Name: Sara Omar
Native Name: سارا عومهر (Kurdish)
Born: 21 August 1986
Place of Birth: Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan
Citizenship: Denmark (since 2001)
Background: Kurdish; raised during the Iran-Iraq War and Anfal genocide
Occupation: Novelist, poet, columnist, human rights activist
Era: Contemporary (2004 – present)
Education: BSc Political Science
Known For: Dødevaskeren (2017); breaking taboos around violence against women
Key Works: Dødevaskeren (2017), Skyggedanseren (2019)
Publisher: Politikens Forlag
Major Awards: Readers' Book Prize (2018), Freedom of Speech Award (2018), Danish Institute for Human Rights' Human Rights Award (2019), De Gyldne Laurbær (2020)
Languages of Translation: Swedish, Norwegian, Serbian, Macedonian, French
Table of Contents
Early Life and Origins
Sara Omar was born on 21 August 1986 in the city of Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She grew up during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), which bled directly into the Gulf War of 1990–1991. She was a small child living in the area surrounding Halabja during the chemical weapons attack of 16 March 1988 — one of the worst atrocities of Saddam Hussein's Anfal campaign against the Kurds — and many of her relatives were killed in the wider Anfal genocide of the late 1980s. The wars that shaped her childhood would later become the backdrop of her novels.
She fled Iraqi Kurdistan as a young teenager and arrived in Denmark in 2001 at the age of fifteen. She finished her secondary schooling there before entering university. Originally studying law, she later switched to political science and completed a BSc.
Historical Context
Sara Omar grew up at the intersection of three converging tragedies — the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons campaigns against Kurdish civilians, and the systematic persecution of Kurds across the wider region. Halabja and the Anfal genocide form the moral foundation of her writing.
She came of age in Denmark during a period when Danish public discourse was dominated by debates over immigration, Islam, and freedom of expression — particularly in the wake of the 2005–2006 Mohammed cartoons controversy. Her novels would land directly in the middle of those debates, where the question of who is permitted to criticise religious and cultural practices is unusually charged.
Major Achievements and Contributions
Literary Works
Sara Omar's debut novel Dødevaskeren ("The Dead Washer") was published by Politikens Forlag on 30 November 2017. It tells the story of Frmesk — a name meaning "tear" in Kurdish — a Kurdish girl whose journey carries her from her birth in Sulaymaniyah in 1986 to a hospital bed in Denmark in 2016, where she meets a young Kurdish medical student trapped between a controlling father and her own ambitions. The novel sold over 100,000 copies in Denmark, an extraordinary figure for a literary debut in a country of fewer than six million people. Danish reviewers called it "the MeToo of Muslim women."
The sequel, Skyggedanseren ("Shadow Dancer"), followed on 26 November 2019, continuing Frmesk's story. Both novels are published by Politikens Forlag and have been translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Serbian, Macedonian, and French. In December 2020, the French magazine Le Point named Dødevaskeren one of the thirty most important books published in France that year.
Earlier in her career, Omar published the essay "Den konfliktfyldte unge i et samfund, der er ligeglad" with The Voices in 2006, a poem in the literary magazine Kritiker in 2014, and the poem "Barndommens tavshed" ("Childhood Silence") in the Danish PEN anthology Ord på flugt (2016).
Themes and Activism
Omar writes in Danish about subjects she says she had to break taboos to put into print: honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, incest, sexual assault, social control, and the patriarchal abuse of women in conservative Kurdish-Muslim communities. Since 2004, she has also written critical essays in Middle Eastern media on the rights of women, children, the disabled, and homosexuals — for many years using a male pseudonym to avoid retaliation.
Her literary work has not been separable from her activism. She is an ambassador for DIGNITY (the Danish Institute Against Torture), the Danish Women's Society, the youth organisation Crossing Borders, and the Swedish organisation GAPF, which campaigns against honour-related violence. She has appeared in campaigns for Amnesty International and for Danner, the Danish women's shelter network.
Following the publication of Dødevaskeren, Omar received serious death threats and now lives under police protection — a fact she has spoken about openly in Danish and international media. She describes herself as an "agnostic Muslim" and has said her message is universal: about violence against women in any community where it is tolerated, not about Islam as a faith.
Awards and Recognition
Sara Omar's awards include:
Erik Hoffmeyer's Travel Grant (2015)
Ytringsfrihedsprisen — Freedom of Speech Award (2018)
Årets Victor — Victor of the Year, awarded by Ekstra Bladet (2018)
Artbeat Award (2018)
Læsernes Bogpris — Readers' Book Prize (2018) for Dødevaskeren
ELLE Style Awards: Woman of the Year (2019)
Martin Andersen Nexø Foundation's literary prize (2019)
Danish Institute for Human Rights' Human Rights Award (2019)
De Gyldne Laurbær — The Golden Laurel (2020) for Skyggedanseren
She opened the Danish literary festival Bogforum in Copenhagen in 2019 and gave the opening speech at CPH:DOX in 2020. She sits on the Expert Advisory Panel for the Arts & Globalization Communication Group.
Timeline and Key Events
1986 — Born 21 August in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan.
1988 — Lives in the Halabja region during the chemical weapons attack of 16 March.
Late 1980s — Anfal genocide; many of her relatives are killed.
Late 1990s — Flees Iraqi Kurdistan as a refugee.
2001 — Arrives in Denmark at age 15; resumes schooling and later enters university.
2004 — Begins writing critical essays in Middle Eastern media (often under a male pseudonym).
2014 — Publishes a poem in the Swedish literary magazine Kritiker.
2016 — Contributes "Barndommens tavshed" to the Danish PEN anthology Ord på flugt.
2017 — Debut novel Dødevaskeren published by Politikens Forlag (30 November).
2018 — Wins Readers' Book Prize, Freedom of Speech Award, Victor of the Year, and Artbeat Award.
2019 — Wins Danish Institute for Human Rights Award, ELLE Style Awards Woman of the Year, and Martin Andersen Nexø Foundation prize. Sequel Skyggedanseren published (26 November). Opens Bogforum Copenhagen.
2020 — Skyggedanseren wins De Gyldne Laurbær. Gives opening speech at CPH:DOX. Le Point names Dødevaskeren one of France's 30 most important books of the year.
Debates and Misconceptions
Sara Omar's work has provoked sharp reactions from across the political and religious spectrum. She has been celebrated as a fearless voice on women's rights and condemned by some as Islamophobic. She rejects both extremes, describing herself as an "agnostic Muslim" whose work targets violence against women wherever it occurs, rather than Islam as a faith.
The threats she has received have led to her living under police protection in Denmark since shortly after Dødevaskeren's publication. Her decision to translate her own books into Kurdish and Arabic at her own expense — to bypass censorship in the Middle East — speaks to the difficulty of reaching the readers who most directly inspired her work.
She is sometimes described in error as Danish-Norwegian. She is in fact Kurdish-Danish: her novels have been translated into Norwegian (alongside Swedish, Serbian, Macedonian, and French), but her citizenship is Danish and she has lived in Denmark since 2001.
Legacy and Cultural Impact
Sara Omar is the first internationally recognised female novelist from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Her novels have brought a Kurdish woman's voice into the centre of Scandinavian literary culture and have given many women — especially Muslim and Kurdish women in the Nordic countries — a vocabulary for experiences that were previously unspeakable in public. Omar herself has described how her books have "started a very quiet movement among women, especially women of Muslim background in Scandinavia."
Her work belongs to a wider tradition of Kurdish literature in European exile — alongside writers like Mehmed Uzun in Sweden and Bachtyar Ali in Germany — but she is distinct in writing entirely in Danish, in the bestseller-scale reach of her debut, and in the directness with which she addresses gender-based violence.
Related People, Places, and Topics
Mehmed Uzun — Kurdish novelist who lived in Swedish exile
Bachtyar Ali — leading Kurdish novelist writing in Sorani
Halabja chemical attack — 1988 atrocity in her childhood region
Anfal campaign — Saddam Hussein's genocide against the Kurds
Sulaymaniyah — her birthplace
Politikens Forlag — her Danish publisher
Kurds in Denmark — the diaspora community she came of age in
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Sara Omar?
Sara Omar (born 21 August 1986) is a Kurdish-Danish author, poet, and human rights activist whose debut novel Dødevaskeren ("The Dead Washer", 2017) became one of the most widely read Danish novels of recent years and won her some of Denmark's most prestigious literary and human rights prizes.
What is Sara Omar best known for?
She is best known for Dødevaskeren (2017) and its sequel Skyggedanseren (2019) — novels that broke taboos in Danish literature around honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, and the abuse of women in conservative Kurdish-Muslim communities.
Is Sara Omar Kurdish?
Yes. Sara Omar was born in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and identifies as Kurdish. She has been a Danish citizen since 2001, and her novels are explicitly rooted in Kurdish identity, geography, and history.
What language does Sara Omar write in?
She writes her novels in Danish. She has been translating her own books into Kurdish and Arabic at her own expense to make them accessible to Middle Eastern readers without censorship.
Why does Sara Omar live under police protection?
She has received serious death threats since the publication of Dødevaskeren in 2017, in response to her open depiction of honour-based violence, female genital mutilation, and abuses she attributes to reactionary religious interpretations.
References and Further Reading
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