Ghaffor Hotamov

Ghaffor Hotamov was born on 25 April 1953 in the village of Gujbog in the Navbahor district of the Navoi region, into a farming family. In 1974 he graduated from the philology faculty of the Tashkent State Pedagogical Institute.

He began his working life at the editorial office of the republican children’s newspaper. He later worked on the newspapers Toshkent Oqshomi and O‘zbekiston Ovozi, at the magazine Yoshlik and at the Ghafur Ghulam Publishing House of Literature and Art; at O‘zbekiston Ovozi he was deputy editor-in-chief. Afterwards he served as editor-in-chief of the magazine Yoshlik and of the newspaper Turkiston.

He entered literature through the short story: his first story, “Tong va shom” (“Dawn and Dusk”), appeared in the magazine Guliston in 1976, and in 1978 the Ghafur Ghulam publishing house issued his first collection of stories, “Xat tashuvchi bola” (“The Letter-Carrier Boy”).

He went on to write novellas, among them “Qaytish” (“The Return”, 1980) and “Quduq tepasidagi oy” (“The Moon Above the Well”, 1985); “Tohir va Zuhraning kulmagan baxti” (“The Unsmiling Fortune of Tohir and Zuhra”, 1990) and “Azal va abad” were published in Yoshlik, where his novel “Yangi oy chiqqan kecha” (“The Night the New Moon Rose”) also appeared. His stories, novellas and essays were later issued in book form as “Kuntug‘mishning kulmagan baxti” (“The Unhappy Fate of Kuntug‘mish”), “Birinchi muhabbat qissasi” (“A Tale of First Love”) and “Kecha va bugunning saboqlari” (“Lessons of Yesterday and Today”).

For the novella “Quduq tepasidagi oy” and the essay “Evrilish” (“Transformation”) he received a prize of the youth organisation of Uzbekistan. Some of his works have been translated into foreign languages.

Ghaffor Hotamov died in Tashkent on 3 April 2021; the funeral took place there on 4 April.